Chicago - Field Museum

The next day we took the kids to the Field Museum, the massive natural history museum that sits on the shores of Lake Michigan.



The museum contains over 24 million objects and specimens in its collection. And probably the most popular parts of that collection are the dinosaurs.



And the most famous of the dinosaur fossils there is Sue, which is considered to be the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossil ever found.



Sue is 40 feet long and 13 feet high, and is estimated to be about 67 million years old.



And just like those islands from the Jurassic Park movies, you can find dinosaurs all over the museum. This one is named Maximo, and is a titanosaur (which is the largest dinosaur ever found).



The titanosaur towers over the African elephants that are also on display.



We left the museum and then walked along the lake for a bit, passing by the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. We walked by a small beach, and since it was a hot summer day there were lots of people out swimming. Before we went back to the hotel, I stopped to get a few pictures from the Planetarium, which offered this nice view of the Chicago skyline.

Chicago - Hancock Tower

Later that evening I headed out to visit the 360 Chicago Observation Deck, which sits on the 94th floor of the Hancock Tower (formally called 875 North Michigan Avenue). Like the observation deck in the Willis Tower, this one also starts with a series of exhibits on the history of the building and about architecture in Chicago. But the one here was much smaller, and also lacked a spot to get a picture with Oprah.

It doesn't take too long to reach the elevators, which quickly zoom up 1,030 feet to the deck. The views here are great, offering expansive views of downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan.







But it was kinda hard to get good pictures there. The windows were covered with smudges and fingerprints. And the glass was also really good at showing reflections, so many of the pictures ended up with ghostly reflections of other people's shirts or legs.



The Observation Deck takes up the entire 94th floor, but there really wasn't that much room. A lot of space is taken up by seating for a bar, where you can order overpriced drinks. There is also a spot where you can pay extra to stand in a little glass box that tilts out of the side of the building. So most of the remaining empty space always seemed to be busy with people posing for pictures or taking selfies. And if someone just happened to linger for a bit trying to get a picture, there would soon develop a line of people impatiently waiting for them to finish so they could take their spot by the window.



But one visitor there had managed to find a good spot - this spider had somehow made its way up 94 floors and built a web on the other side of the window. From there it had a pretty good view of a nice sunset.









As it got darker, the reflections in the glass became a lot harder to avoid.



But it was also really cool to watch as the millions of lights in the city turned on.



This is the view looking west, before the last bit of light from the sunset faded out.



I had just about given up on getting any more pictures. It was so dark that the glass was full of reflections, like a mirror. But then I saw a little wooden box sitting next to one of the windows. I'm not sure what that box's function was, but it turned into a really nice makeshift tripod. I put the camera on it, with the lens pressed up against the glass. If I put my hands around the lens, it cut out most of the reflections. So I turned on the 2 second timer on the camera, which gave me enough time to press the shutter and then move my hands over the lens to cut out the glare and reflections in the glass. I did this a few times and managed to get a few pictures that actually turned out ok (hopefully I didn't annoy too many of the other visitors by awkwardly sitting by that little box and taking pictures for a few minutes).



After that I took the elevator down to the lobby, and walked out onto Michigan Avenue. Just across the street from the Hancock Tower is the Fourth Presbyterian Church, which was built in 1912.



And just down the road is the old Chicago Water Tower, which was built in 1869.



It is the second oldest water tower in the country, and was one of the few structures in the area that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Chicago - Crown Fountain & Boat Tour

We headed out later on that morning, this time taking the train over to Millennium Park.





Since this was our kid's first visit to Chicago, most of our activities were things that would interest a nine and four year-old. So we took them to the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park, which is a combination outdoor sculpture and splash pad. The fountain consists of two 50 foot-tall glass brick towers, with a black granite reflecting pool between them. The glass towers play digital images of faces, which every once in awhile will squirt out a stream of water.



It’s a popular spot in the summer. Most of the kids were completely soaked (along with a few of the adults there too).





And then we headed over to The Bean, which was packed with people. I was really glad that I had visited there a few hours earlier when it was way less crowded.







From there we took the bus to Navy Pier, and then took the kids to the Chicago Children's Museum. After they had fully explored the museum, we went over to catch one of the Architecture Boat Tours that depart from the pier. The tour-boat headed out, passing through the lock and then started slowly heading up the Chicago River. It was an interesting experience to see the many skyscrapers from a different perspective.





The tour-guide provided a mix of architecture facts and cheesy jokes. And she was also sure to point out which of their competitors was the boat that had a bunch of raw sewage dumped on it by the Dave Matthews Band tour bus in 2004. Luckily our tour-boat passed under all the bridges without any incident that day.





The boat then headed back out into Lake Michigan, and sped around for a few minutes. It was a hot day, so the breeze on the lake felt really nice.