J & Y's Excellent Adventure -- Part II
The post I tried to publish this morning mysteriously disappeared, so I am going to have to recap the entire day here...
Y got a great night sleep last night. Me -- not so great. I had trouble adjusting the air conditioning, and the beds were not terribly comfortable. As karma would have it, a truck of new mattresses pulled up as I was pulling out of the hotel. Oh well. I guess the fact that I showed up 45 minutes after a blackout yesterday evens that score a little.
We ate whatever we could at the hotel's continental breakfast, and then went across the street to the kosher bagel place to get food for the day and tonight's trip. The breakfast in the bagel place smelled SO good, but we were stuffed to the gills with all the Corn Flakes and bananas that we could eat, so we didn't eat there.
Then we headed downtown on the subway, and saw some really diverse architecture along the route.
Our first stop was Navy Pier and The Chicago children's' Museum. The museum was really great, but Y is almost too old for it (That didn't stop him from having a grate time though). Also, when we were in the gift shop the clerk came over to us with one of those loud snappy, boomy thingies and did it behind Y. He was SO frightened, and the lady knew it because she even chuckled and said "oh did that scare him." She then continued to laugh and snapped it again, so we went running out of the store, and she lost a sale. Tough luck. (I also left a complaint letter in the suggestion box). I mean how can a children's museum have employees who think it's funny to scare children?
After some directions from the homeless guy selling post cards, we took the free trolley over to state street, and did a little shopping. Then we hopped back on the trolley and went over to the Sear's tower. (Along the way we were seeing a lot of the city's sights from the trolley window). I was a little apprehensive about the sky deck since, if you believe what you hear on the news at least, every terrorist in the world has his eyes on that building, but we went up anyway. I felt a little gyped when, after they took my money, they told me that we had to sit through a "short" movie about the building before going up. Uggh - what a waste of our time.
I had worried that the view from the top would scare Y, but he loved it. He couldn't believe how small the baseball stadium and all of the other skyscrapers looked from up there.
Then we took the trolley back to Michigan Ave. for more shopping and a wild goose chase looking for Disney Quest. The hotel had given us a map of Chicago with an advertisement for this place, and the first trolley driver of the day had told us where to find it. We walked essentially in circles (and the heat index in the city was near 100 today), for an hour. Finally we stopped at Starbucks for chocolate milks, and a customer who overheard our conversation with the barista told us that they closed down 3 years ago. Man, were we mad!
We were both tiring out at that point, so we went back to the subway, and headed up to Skokie again. We went to a really great mall there, and Y got his first big boy watch (a Swatch). I shlepped him all the way down to Bloomingdales to get M a "bloomies" shirt, only to find out they don't have them in her size. Then we ate a delicious dinner at DiNali's and picked up some nosh at Hungarian, and hit the road.
Tonight we are staying at a very comfortable Holiday Inn in New Buffalo Michigan.
I will post more tomorrow.
Jenn
Y got a great night sleep last night. Me -- not so great. I had trouble adjusting the air conditioning, and the beds were not terribly comfortable. As karma would have it, a truck of new mattresses pulled up as I was pulling out of the hotel. Oh well. I guess the fact that I showed up 45 minutes after a blackout yesterday evens that score a little.
We ate whatever we could at the hotel's continental breakfast, and then went across the street to the kosher bagel place to get food for the day and tonight's trip. The breakfast in the bagel place smelled SO good, but we were stuffed to the gills with all the Corn Flakes and bananas that we could eat, so we didn't eat there.
Then we headed downtown on the subway, and saw some really diverse architecture along the route.
Our first stop was Navy Pier and The Chicago children's' Museum. The museum was really great, but Y is almost too old for it (That didn't stop him from having a grate time though). Also, when we were in the gift shop the clerk came over to us with one of those loud snappy, boomy thingies and did it behind Y. He was SO frightened, and the lady knew it because she even chuckled and said "oh did that scare him." She then continued to laugh and snapped it again, so we went running out of the store, and she lost a sale. Tough luck. (I also left a complaint letter in the suggestion box). I mean how can a children's museum have employees who think it's funny to scare children?
After some directions from the homeless guy selling post cards, we took the free trolley over to state street, and did a little shopping. Then we hopped back on the trolley and went over to the Sear's tower. (Along the way we were seeing a lot of the city's sights from the trolley window). I was a little apprehensive about the sky deck since, if you believe what you hear on the news at least, every terrorist in the world has his eyes on that building, but we went up anyway. I felt a little gyped when, after they took my money, they told me that we had to sit through a "short" movie about the building before going up. Uggh - what a waste of our time.
I had worried that the view from the top would scare Y, but he loved it. He couldn't believe how small the baseball stadium and all of the other skyscrapers looked from up there.
Then we took the trolley back to Michigan Ave. for more shopping and a wild goose chase looking for Disney Quest. The hotel had given us a map of Chicago with an advertisement for this place, and the first trolley driver of the day had told us where to find it. We walked essentially in circles (and the heat index in the city was near 100 today), for an hour. Finally we stopped at Starbucks for chocolate milks, and a customer who overheard our conversation with the barista told us that they closed down 3 years ago. Man, were we mad!
We were both tiring out at that point, so we went back to the subway, and headed up to Skokie again. We went to a really great mall there, and Y got his first big boy watch (a Swatch). I shlepped him all the way down to Bloomingdales to get M a "bloomies" shirt, only to find out they don't have them in her size. Then we ate a delicious dinner at DiNali's and picked up some nosh at Hungarian, and hit the road.
Tonight we are staying at a very comfortable Holiday Inn in New Buffalo Michigan.
I will post more tomorrow.
Jenn
posted by Jenn @ 11:10 PM
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