Chicago 2008 - Wednesday - Lost Again

We're lost again. Well, turned around at least. I found the right street but picked the wrong direction, pretty much every direction I choose is wrong. We ate at Mickey D’s (McDonalds at home is Mickey D's here - people refer to it as Mickey D's even some of the signage says Mickey D) instead of a local today. P & I just cannot get over the fact that everyone seems to like their jobs, or at the very least they are serious about doing a good job. Businesses just don’t tolerate lazy as much as at home, good is average and exceptional is common- I guess it comes from the frenzied pace and the fact that there are some 2.5 million other people to take the job. I know we have been near the tourist territory, but in other tourist locales we don’t often have this consistent service from so many different businesses... it helps that anyone busy has 1-3 people expediting, just working the crowd smoothing things over and making them go as quickly as possible.

We rode the trolley again, hope to do that as little as possible. Yes it is free but it also uncomfortable, very crowded and quite a wait. We went to Shedd which was also really crowded, too crowded to truly enjoy. P was pretty disappointed in it all since a lot of the displays didn’t lend themselves to the kind of crowds and we were often just trying to avoid stepping on little kids. One interesting experience, we followed a Shedd curator who was giving a special tour to a couple of foreign professionals (I want to say German but have know idea why) while they talked shop from display to display. The German aquarium people had been to several other aquariums in the United States. It was interesting listening to all of the shoptalk, even if 90% of it was way beyond our understanding, what plants, what fish would go with what, etc. It was a little disappointing to find out that there weren't a lot of grand plans - three of the stingrays that P and I liked in the Amazon rain forest display were bought at a LOCAL PET STORE! Ha Ha, it was also odd to hear that the Amazon big fish display that we and many of the patrons were oohing and aahing over was basically a dumping ground for fish that were too aggressive or were trying to breed when they didn’t want them to breed. Also the reason there were so many stingrays was because this curator was a stingray person, while they have a lot of turtles in the displays because one of her coworkers is a real turtle guy.


We went to the Adler Planetarium next, which had a few neat l exhibits. The starry sky exhibit was interesting, presenter was good, but I (barely) drifted off before an elbow brought me back. A water taxi (much quicker and easier) and on to the Architectural river cruise which was wonderful. Our guide was Michael and he went quickly so we lost quite a bit, but still learned a lot about Chicago Architecture. The modern (Van der Rohe — boooring rectangle boxes) neo-modern (Goldberg and others I think) art deco, neo-gothic, nude (buildings that is – though we did see the old playboy hotel, now the Hard Rock Hotel)and others — plus all of the buildings and views in and an opportunity to sit down for a while.



Dinner at Uno's Pizza - you place your pizza order when you put your name on the waiting list, 45 minutes to an hour later you are seated, and your pizza arrives a few minutes after.... "It takes about an hour to ccok a pizza" quoth the hostess over and over and over again - I have no idea how she kept her cool, explaining the same thing to so many people. Deep dish completely unlike the deep dish pizza we usually think of, overflowing with ingredients - it was great. After dinner we waddled back to the El to ride back to hotel. Good thing we had to do some walking or we couldn't have enjoyed the evening dessert bar at the hotel.