A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

Wednesday morning we were up by eight o’clock and out of the hotel shortly after nine.  The plan for today was to tour the Field Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.  We decided to take a taxi to the Field Museum since it was out by the planetarium and aquarium, and we wanted to maximize our time.

The Field Museum was home to “Sue”, the world’s largest and most complete T-Rex skeleton.  We were also able to meet the Lions of Tsavo, the man-eating lions that were made famous in the movie, The Ghost and the Darkness.  The Egyptian exhibition was pretty cool as well.  It contained 23 mummies, and 5000 year old hieroglyphics.  There was also a full-size re-creation of a famous Egyptian tomb.  As cool as these were I think I enjoyed the Evolving Planet exhibition the most which let you walk through the evolution of the planet from prehistoric to present times.

Once we finished up at the Field Museum we took a walk along the shores of Lake Michigan to the Buckingham Fountain.  You may recognize it from the opening of the sitcom Married With Children.  We fired off a few photos, grabbed a hot dog, then continued our journey through Millennium Park.

Millennium Park is Chicago’s newest landmark.  This grand urban park is home to Frank Gehry’s distinctive Pritzker Music Pavilion and the Cloud Gate facade of curled metal in the shape of a bean.  This thing was pretty cool, but kind of weird as well.

There was also two large monoliths called the Crown Fountain covered entirely by changing projections as water fell down them.  Very interesting indeed.   It seems that Chicago residents use them to cool off during those hot summer days.  I would loved to have done this as well, but I didn’t really want to walk around the Art Institute of Chicago while being all wet.

After we finished our walk through the park we came up on the Art Institute of Chicago.  This building was massive and filled with all sorts of art.  The exhibit of the 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms was insane.  This Chicago socialite of the early 20th century seemed to have a lot of time on her hands.  The detail of the rooms was amazing.

The art from all corners of the globe were nice to see, but the two pieces I really wanted to view were the famous paintings American Gothic and Nighthawks.  Michelle and I were most interested in seeing the modern contemporary art galleries, but we had some bad luck since they were all temporarily closed.  Oh well, next time I guess.

When all was said and done at the Institute we walked back to the hotel to get ready for the evening.  We had bought tickets to the musical Wicked, a highly acclaimed show set in The Wizard of Oz universe.  The premise of the show is to explain what led the Wicked Witch of the West to become “wicked”.  It starts before and finishes shortly after the events of The Wizard of Oz.  Both of us thoroughly enjoyed the show.  It kind of reminded me of the story of Anakin Skywalker.   The show was at  the impressive Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre.

After the show we wanted to just have a small bite to eat, and once again we found ourselves walking from restaurant to restaurant.  By the time we reached our hotel, we were both tired and decided to just call it a night.

You can see the rest of the photos from the day by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr