Chicago: The Final Chapter

I can't remember the order of the rest of the trip. So I'll just explain the pics. This picture was taken at the top of the John Hancock building. They make you get your picture taken in front of this fake background, and I DIDN'T CLOSE MY EYES!! What a miracle. So of course I had to buy it.
















This is the view from the top. The picture on the right is crappy, but if you look close you can see the spiders that were outside EVERY SINGLE window. They were huge mofos. We were wondering why spiders would choose to live on the outside of a very tall building. But they're procreating just fine up there - there were tons. There's an area that just has a screen instead of a window, and we saw some spiders INSIDE! Creepy! It reminded me of that movie Arachnophobia. It was gross.

We went shopping at some fun stores. I heard a rumor that dad was going to give us girls a little spending money. So whether that's true or not, we spent it. (Thanks dad!) I thought H&M was going to be awesome, but it was an 80's extravaganza. (NOT GOOD) I know it's all "in" right now, but everything looked like Nanette White's homemade hand-me-downs. Heidi went right to work, though, and found some cute stuff. Zak and I just walked around singing to Madonna. (Yeah, Zak's not gay.)





















This was a spooky church that Jaime and I explored. I love it. It's going to be the inspiration for the teen fiction mystery novel I probably won't write one day.

I'll give you one guess what everyone was
stopping to laugh and point at.



Some weird sculpture that looks like a bike helmet.



Here's Sue - World's Largest and Most Complete
T-Rex Skeleton (round of applause)

Sue was at the Field Museum. We bought a city pass for 50 bucks, which would let us into 5 major Chicago attractions. This was supposed to save us money. We did the Aquarium (sort of - thanks to me), and the John Hancock building. The Field Museum was next on our list. We decided to sleep in that morning and catch up on our z's, so by the time we got ready, took the train and ate lunch, it was 3:00. We had 3 more things to do and about 2 1/2 hours to do them since they all closed about 5:30. Good. We raced through a couple exhibits at the Field Museum - it was eh, to say the least. No one was raving. We raced to get to the Museum of Science and Industry. We had to cross some pretty crazy traffic lanes, and then we realized we wouldn't make it there before it closed. The Planetarium was closer, so we went back across the crazy traffic lanes and walked to the Planetarium. (We're quite the planners.) On our way we walked by this:


It was very lovely. We got to the Planetarium in time to look at one exhibit, in which Heidi and Zak dressed up and pretended to be Greek students.


































I said that Heidi looked very "ancient" in this setting, which doesn't sound nice. Neither does "old-fashioned". What word am I looking for? I mean it in a nice way, but I still can't think of the word. Anyone?

After that mind-blowing exhibit we saw an IMAX movie on the planetarium domed screen thing. It was about ancient Egypt. I think almost everyone slept through it, but I managed to stay awake for most of it, and it was actually pretty interesting. Ancient civilizations paid very close attention to the stars and the goings-on of the night sky. It made me realize how far away we've gotten from nature, in our office buildings and houses. We never have to study the sky or be outside and really observe things. At least I don't. It made me want to do more of that. Reconnect with nature. That's why I'm sitting lazily at the computer to type this blog. I'm really gonna get on that nature thing. I promise.




We went to the Navy Pier, had dinner and walked around. We didn't have time to do much else, because we had to make sure to catch the (damn) train. Have I complained about the train enough? Zak's apartment was really nice, and it was great that it was free, but I think it would have been worth the money to have a hotel right in the city, so we wouldn't have so much back and forth travel time. That stunk. There was also a pillow shortage, which we finally solved the last night, by going to Target and buying our own pillows. Oh - and a towel shortage. Zak owns all of two towels, which five of us shared for 4 days. I tried not to think about whose butt particles I was wiping my face on. And it didn't help when Zak handed it to me on my way to the shower, and said, "Smells like Zak...." There are so many things wrong about that.

On our last night we wanted to get home early so we could bond and talk instead of falling into bed the second we got home. So we took the early train, bought pillows and a cake (for Jaime's birthday) and went to dinner at Giordano's, where we had some delicious deep dish pizza. We got back to Zak's apt., played Clue, and talked til the wee hours of the morning. It was a great bonding and storytelling time. (I think we scared Tiffanie a tiny bit.) But it was fun. We also sang happy birthday to Jaime.





















We decided to go to Ikea on our last day, but first we drove around aimlessly for an hour, to return Zak's cable box. We never found the place, but we did waste precious Ikea time. Ikea was fun and not too overwhelming since I know I can get all the stuff I want this spring in Draper!! Happy day! I got MORE stuff for our playhouse. I can't stop buying things for it, and the sheetrock's not even finished (and may never be). Settle down, Paul - I'm kidding. Paul has totally been working on it today.

The flight home was ten thousand times better than the other one. The plane wasn't very full, so Jaime and I had an empty seat between us and it was so much better. aaaahhhh So.........despite the rocky beginning, I declare this trip.....FUN.