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The last day of vacation, we got on up and had another hotel breakfast, plus leftover pizza from the night before, packed up the van, checked out and headed down to the Museum of Science and Industry. Once again, a massive museum with more than you could see in a day. I guess Chicago likes its museums big. They were having a special exhibit on Leonardo DaVinci where they had built models of some of his most famous mechanical designs and some of them were hands on. Jesse got to fire a catapult clear across the room. He'd just been studying Leonardo in school so it tied right in. My Mom took Dingo in The Idea Factory and I thought he'd never come out of there. Besides that we went through a huge model train layout, the Colleen Moore Fairy Castle, an airplane you could walk through, an exhibit on genetics and one on toy robots, "yesterday's mainstreet", which had an ice cream parlor we had to stop at, and the U-505 exhibit. The U-505 is a German U-boat from WWII, the only one we ever captured and just one of a handful remaining in the world today. It's more enormous than I thought it would be. They had to actually lower it into place and then build the building around it. We paid the extra $5 and took a guided tour of the inside, which also explained how it was captured by Allied forces in 1944. I think it was actually my favorite thing in Chicago, but I like WWII history anyway. There was an exhibit of a lot of artifacts taken off the boat too. Apparently capturing the classified documents , Enigma machine, codebooks, etc, from the U-505 may have hastened the end of the war by a significant amount. I found a Discovery Channel special on it from Netflix and am having it shipped today.
Anyway, after that we went to Chinatown, which Jesse really wanted to do. We had an excellent Dim Sum at the New Three Happiness restaurant and then we just walked up and down the street shopping and snacking. We brought back quite a few souveniers as Jesse likes all things Asian. By the time we were done there, we were running out of time before our flight, but I had promised the kids a beach, so we took 30 minutes at the beach near McCormick Place and let the kids put on suits and splash in Lake Michigan so they could say they'd been in a Great Lake. Then we had my folks drop us off (they were driving back) at the el station at Chinatown and we only had to change trains once to get on the one to O'Hare airport. The el was faster than driving though, I think, and we met some nice ladies from Pittsburgh to talk to on the ride. We were cutting the time pretty fine by the time we were underway to the airport and then we had some trouble getting cleared for boarding passes once we got there, but the gate agent was very nice and the plane was delayed anyway, so all was well that ended well, even if we had some panicked moments and running through the airport the way they do in movies.
All in all, a very good trip, and I don't feel like we wasted a moment there. I don't think that sort of non-stop activity is great for every family, but it suited us and we were glad to get to see so much. I'll probaby put more pics of the Chicago part of the trip up in the gallery with the St. Louis pics tomorrow maybe.
Anyway, after that we went to Chinatown, which Jesse really wanted to do. We had an excellent Dim Sum at the New Three Happiness restaurant and then we just walked up and down the street shopping and snacking. We brought back quite a few souveniers as Jesse likes all things Asian. By the time we were done there, we were running out of time before our flight, but I had promised the kids a beach, so we took 30 minutes at the beach near McCormick Place and let the kids put on suits and splash in Lake Michigan so they could say they'd been in a Great Lake. Then we had my folks drop us off (they were driving back) at the el station at Chinatown and we only had to change trains once to get on the one to O'Hare airport. The el was faster than driving though, I think, and we met some nice ladies from Pittsburgh to talk to on the ride. We were cutting the time pretty fine by the time we were underway to the airport and then we had some trouble getting cleared for boarding passes once we got there, but the gate agent was very nice and the plane was delayed anyway, so all was well that ended well, even if we had some panicked moments and running through the airport the way they do in movies.
All in all, a very good trip, and I don't feel like we wasted a moment there. I don't think that sort of non-stop activity is great for every family, but it suited us and we were glad to get to see so much. I'll probaby put more pics of the Chicago part of the trip up in the gallery with the St. Louis pics tomorrow maybe.
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My students are always asking why I don't sleep more and I tell them I'm probably only going to live until 60 and I don't want to spend 1/3 of my life asleep! Now if I can just use more of that time I'm awake productively instead of watching Iron Chef reruns.
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