Saturday – Chicago

Well we made it to Chicago and had a great first day just checking it out. We knew that the second day that we were going to be there was going to be busy – but we really didn’t really know just how busy!

The first thing that I wanted to do on Saturday was to go to the largest bean. Now I knew that Daryl wasn’t too excited about going. If you’re wondering just how I knew – that’s simple. Did you ever talk to someone about something and their eyes glaze over and then they say, I really don’t know why you want to go there. Yea, pretty good sign isn’t it? But I held my ground, and soon we were driving downtown to see if we could find someplace to park and check out the bean. Now I’ve been doing a little research on this bean, and even though it’s not really a ‘bean’, it’s 33x66x42 feet and weighs around 100 tons. Pretty big huh?  And if you search for the top things to do when you are in Chicago, it says that this is a must. Now in our car, this topic was very much debated on just who actually puts together these lists and if you should believe them or not.  But check out the picture below, pretty cool huh?

World’s Largest Bean

Next on our agenda was to walk to the Willis Tower (known in the past as the Sears Tower) This tower has a history as being the largest tower in the world, but has given up the title to Dubai. But when you’re standing above the city 103 stories  on one of the ledges overlooking the city with only glass holding you up in the air – you know that you are pretty high in the air.

It’s a long ways up to the top. If you look close you can see where you can step out

Overlooking the city

Standing over the city

After the tower we headed back to see about going to the Field Museum. We decided to walk around the city and found a couple of pretty cool spots to also check out. When we got to the Field Museum it was pretty awesome! Even though you can kind of see how big the museums are – I’m really thinking that they really don’t do it justice. We got lost more than once in it! This museum is the home to Sue. Sue is the largest and most complete T. rex ever found.

The largest T.rex ever found

There was so much to look at and do there, we knew that you could come back to this museum a couple of times and never see it all. In the Egypt display, Daryl caught me checking out one of the Egyptian cots. I’m just saying that it was really really comfortable!

It did look like a good place to take a rest

But hands down what I liked the best was the farm display. There were these young girls that were driving a combine with a screen in front of the combine like they were taking the corn out of the field. Now granted the combine wasn’t actually moving, but when you would sit in the cab, it made noises like you were and the corn was being picked out of the field. Just way cool!

Combining corn

Then what did we do after that? Well, we walked back to the Bean and found our car and headed back to the hotel to get ready for the night. We walked by a couple of cool things on the way back.

Chicago Board of Trade

Statue outside the Museum of Art

The upper railway system. If you saw the Blues Brothers movie, this is where they shot some of the scenes.

So what was our plans for the night? We had tickets to a Bob Seger and Joe Walsh concert. Yea, pretty cool. The concert was almost 3 hours long and we had the best time. I’ve never been to a concert where the whole crowd, all 23,500 of us,  got so into the music. Both singers really played up the crowd and it’ll be a concert that I know that we won’t forget.

Bob Seger

Joe Walsh

But after the concert and we headed outside, it was raining. No, that might not be the right word. It was POURING and lightening. We figured we could pick up a cab easy after the concert, but we had to wait a little longer than we would have expected. Oh well, we didn’t melt or anything,  and we eventually made it back to the  hotel. But needless to say, all the excitement of the day and more walking than we’ve done for more than a month – it was late and we were ready to get some sleep. But first, we ordered room service and got our bellies full of some deep dish pizza. We knew we were going to need the energy for tomorrow because it was going to be another busy day!