Melissa, Will, and I on our final full day visiting Chicago, Illinois last month decided to divide it between exploring their Museum of Science and Industry and experiencing the top of Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. We got on the Metra line...separate from the Chicago Transit Authority trains...to take us to the Hyde Park area south of downtown, where the University of Chicago lies to the west and Jackson Park, the site of our museum destination as well as a short strip of Lake Michigan beach, on the east side of our rail station. On the train the conductor...unlike on the C.T.A. rails...punched our tickets like Tom Hanks did on The Polar Express, but alas, no words like "Believe" or "Learn" appeared on them. And dang it, no hot chocolate either...but I still liked the more traditional train ride experience. At the museum we first descended to a lower floor where the story of the U.S. Navy's capture of an intact Nazi German U-Boot (U-505) in August 1944 during World War II was elaborately presented...after the war they even took their prize around the country for display. Then we entered a large room where we discovered the actual submarine...much, much bigger than I had imagined it to be (see first photo). The Museum of Science and Industry has a lot of different areas to explore...we had to pick and choose, watching a planetarium-style presentation of what it's like to be hit by a tornado, reliving the great Apollo 8 moon flyby in 1968 with the spacecraft itself on display, exhibits about elements of life prolongation, the innovation of vertical urban farms, different types of bicycles (including an inexpensive-but-resilient cardboard bike, description in second photo), genetics (including a display showing newly-hatched chicks), the history of transportation, and electricity...to name a few. There were countless stations for visitors to interact with, and we felt that...as was the case with our Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian museum visits last October...a full appreciation that what this place has to offer required a much greater investment of time than we were able to make...
After leaving the museum, before returning to our Metra rail station, the three of us walked eastward to the beach area, which you can see in the third and fourth pictures. Melissa said that Lake Michigan was very cold...not surprising...but there still were folks out in the water enjoying it all while a lifeguard watched over them. At least with their fresh water they didn't have sharks, although rip current presents a danger there as it does on our Atlantic beaches. We made our way back to the station and decided to have dinner at a downtown restaurant that Melissa's friend had recommended: The Walnut Room, on an upper floor within Macy's. As we were seated for what would be an excellent meal, I looked southward out the window and, lo and behold, on the building across from us was a huge, beautiful mural of the late blues great Muddy Waters, finished three years ago by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra...spectacular, of course my final photo is of that mural...
Later in the evening we three trudged on down the road to Willis Tower...sightseeing like this in Chicago was greatly aided by the fact that we all are seasoned walkers. Besides, there's usually more to see and experience when you're moving more slowly. I'll write about Willis Tower in a future article...
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