The rest of our time in Chicago seemed to fly by pretty quickly. Maybe it was due to the excitement and happiness of getting engaged, or perhaps it was because we were busy the entire time exploring the sites in a city we love being in. I don’t know the cause for certain, but I do know that the time, though fast, was much appreciated. Here’s a recap of our daily adventures…

On Friday (05/10/13) we woke up and decided to go to Adler Planetarium. While there we took in a couple of shows and walked around to check out the place. It was all very interesting and we had a good time. This was the first time in my adult life (I had gone once on a field trip as a child to one) that I had visited a planetarium, and considering how much I enjoy astronomy I found it all to be very fascinating. Once we finished up there we decided to walk back to the hotel and stop by a few other places we were interested in seeing along the way. This included walking back past the Field Museum and noticing some things on the grounds that we hadn’t seen last time; like this replica Olmec Head from San Lorenzo. We then made our way over to Grant Park to see the beautiful Buckingham Fountain From there we meandered over to Millennium Park to see the famous Cloud Gate sculpture (also known as “The Bean”) which was extremely interesting. Melissa got a kick out of the Crown Fountain as well, particularly when it looked like the people on the wall were spitting out water. In general there is a lot of art and culture in and around The Loop area. We eventually made it back to the hotel to drop off everything we had collected. After a brief rest we headed off to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner followed by a failed attempt to see the John Hancock Observatory at night due to the thick fog covering the city. This was our busiest day of the trip and we walked well over 8 miles in our adventuring. Needless to say we passed out when we finally called it a day. All the pictures we took from Friday can be viewed here in the gallery.

Saturday (05/11/13) was the day we decided to spend at the Museum of Science and Industry as there were two exhibits that we were really interested in seeing. The first exhibit, and the one Melissa was most interested in, was called Animals Inside Out and it is an anatomical exhibit of animals without their skin. Through a process known as Plastination, invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, the internal structures of a specimen are preserved in remarkable detail. We were able to view, among other things, a bull, a giraffe, and a camel from a very unique perspective! The second exhibit we were very interested to see was the U-505 Submarine, which is the only German submarine in the United States and was captured during World War II. Not only were there plenty of displays around the submarine providing information on things like the torpedos and different periscopes, but we also got to take a tour inside of it! The space was super cramped with our small tour group and I can’t imagine how it would have been with the even larger crew that was used to man its operations. If you’re in Chicago and have the chance I would highly recommend going to see this exhibit, as it is on permanent display, in fact I wouldn’t mind going to see this again myself! Once we finished up at the museum we took a cab back to the hotel as it was much too far to walk back from, and after dropping off our souvenirs it was right back out to adventuring. Seeing as the weather was nice and the skies were clear we made off for the John Hancock Observatory, located high atop the John Hancock Center. The view of the city from up here was simply amazing, and we would both like to come back here on a clear night to see the city all lit up! All the pictures we took from Saturday can be viewed here in the gallery.

Sadly our trip had to come to an end today. So we packed up and left the city we love and headed home. Along the way we stopped off to call Kylie and my Mom to let them know that we got engaged as we wanted them to hear it directly from us before finding it out via Facebook or someone else. Additionally we wished my Mom a very happy Mother’s day, and then headed off to Melissa’s parent’s house for Mother’s Day and to finally share our good news. Melissa was practically bursting to tell them as I had not let her call or tell anyone over the weekend because I wanted us to enjoy our time together. She actually waited for a few minutes to see if anyone noticed the ring, and once we told her Mom the screams of enjoyment were deafening. It was a very nice ending to our trip, but I must admit it is very nice to be home now and I am very much looking forward to our own bed.