Tag Archives: Chicago

The Rest of Our Trip

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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.

We’re Engaged!

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That’s right, after all these years I finally asked Melissa if she would marry me, and she said yes! Needless to say she was very surprised. Here’s what happened… We drove out to Chicago today to spend the weekend out here to celebrate Melissa’s birthday. When we got to Chicago we were actually to early to check into our hotel, so we decided to go to Navy Pier first. Navy Pier is the one place in Chicago that we always visit when we come to the city, and was the place that, unbeknownst to Melissa, I planned on proposing to her at. Thankfully she choose to go there and not someplace else first when I ask her where she wanted to go to pass the time until we can check in to our room. So we go to Navy Pier and begin to gradually walk around like we normally do, slowly making our way down the pier towards Lake Michigan. The entire time I am trying not to rush her down to the end of the pier so it doesn’t seem odd.

Additionally the sky was slowly turning grey and the clouds were rolling in, clearly indicating that it is planning on raining. Thankfully that eventually came up, and knowing how much we both like looking out over the lake I was able to nonchalantly suggest that, perhaps, we ought to head down to the tip of the pier before that rain came. She thought that was a good idea seeing as we could roam the inside of the pier any time. So we get down to the end of the pier and we are looking out over the lake, her back against my chest as she’s leaning back with my arms around her. Then she gave me the perfect lead into the proposal; she said “I love you.” Why is that the perfect lead in? Because her and I have this little banter sometimes where one of us says “I love you” and the other asks how much, but this time it went a little different… When she said she loved me, I asked her how much, and she responded with the usual “all my heart.”  However, this time, I did not respond with the usual “me too,” instead I said “Prove it.” This took her off guard and she said “What?” with a slight giggle. So I again said, with all seriousness “Prove it” but this time as I said it I lightly pushed her forward and away from me by her hips. As she began to turn around she started to say something that sounded like “What?!” with an annoyed tone but then she saw me down on one knee with a ring out. As her hand went to her mouth I said “Prove it, spend the rest of your life with me. Will you marry me?” She had a few tears in her eyes and she said nodded and eventually got the word “Yes” out, allowed me to slide the ring on her finger and then stand up and embrace her. The picture to the left was taken moments after she said yes and this is the first picture of my beautiful fiance! Shortly after this picture, the rain we mentioned earlier began to fall in fat heavy drops by the bucketful, chasing us indoors. So far the only people we have told that we are engaged is the hotel staff, who very thoughtfully sent us complimentary room service with champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. We will tell the family on Sunday, but for now, this is our time…

Here are a few more photos of shortly after the big moment:

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History and Home

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What an incredibly long day! We woke up this morning at about 8am local time and after getting dressed we went down to the lobby and had breakfast at Starbucks, Kylie was happy they had a very nice sized chocolate doughnut that she choose to have. After we finished eating I went and asked the valet to pull the Envoy around, knowing it would take them about 10 minutes to do so, and we all went back up to the room to verify everything was packed. We then proceeded to check out and head over to the Field Museum. We made it over to the Museum Campus fairly easily and when we came out of the parking structure we realized that we were right next to Soldier Field which was pretty cool, but unfortunately our schedule didn’t allow us time to look around there, maybe next time; then it was on to the museum. Oddly enough it turned out to be cheaper to become members of the museum (which will also get us passes to a few places back in MI as well) than it was to simply get day passes, so that’s what we did. Then it was exploring time! Currently the museum is running special exhibits on whales and horses in addition to all of their normal exhibits. Their traveling exhibit of SUE, “the largest, most complete and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered,” was found in the dusty bad lands of South Dakota! A fact sheet on SUE can be found here (pdf). All the exhibits were awesome as far as I am concerned, but then again natural history has always been interesting to me. The whales were incredible and seeing the skeleton of one of these large creatures was almost overwhelming. We left the Field Museum, and Chicago as a whole, right about 4pm local time and headed back home, by the time we made it here it was about 11pm. Over the course of this trip we took somewhere around 900 pictures, so in the coming days I will need to find time to prepare them and get them in to the gallery. But now, it’s time to sleep.

A Day with Fish and Dolls

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Today we got up early and had breakfast in the lobby of the hotel at the State Street Bread Company, which I personally feel was very over priced and for that price the food was just ok. After eating we grabbed another taxi (which, again, Kylie loved. I am starting to think the taxi rides are going to be her favorite part of this trip) and headed over to Shedd Aquarium. We got there shortly after they opened and got our Total Experience passes which let us explore the entire aquarium, attend one of the 4-D shows, and attend the live aquatic show. The live show was pretty cool and consisted of a four Pacific White-Sided dolphins. Additionally the also showed two different Red Tailed Hawks that also live at the aquarium. We all like a lot of different parts of the aquarium but some of the highlights were the dolphins, the beluga whales (both of which we could see swimming in there tanks below the water through some very large windows). The wild reef exhibit was also really cool and Kylie was really happy to be able to see her saw nosed shark swimming around. The last thing we saw was the Caribbean Reef exhibit, and we got there just in time to see the daily dive show where one of the staff actually was swimming in the tank and feeding the fish while answering questions from the audience and telling us about the fish. The large sea turtle named Nickle that was rescued after getting hit by a boat and the 7 foot moray eel that actually came out of his hole during the presentation and swam around the diver. After we decided we were done at the aquarium (which we feel we completely explored in the almost 7 hours we were there) we went picked up another taxi (and again Kylie was thrilled) and headed back over to the Magnificent Mile, specifically to the American Girl store. We were there specifically for Kylie because she wanted to get Alissa (her doll) her very own school backpack set which we found after asking two different associates (the first told us to look upstairs, after looking for a while the second showed us where it was). Additionally Kylie also got a little surprise from Daddy and Melissa when we decided to also get Alissa a new pet, Sugar, that Kylie had showed interest in. After leaving the store we walked back down Michigan Ave, both because that was the direction of our hotel and because we wanted to see more of what the Magnificent Mile had to offer. Finding dinner tonight proved difficult for multiple reasons; the restaurants along the mile were either on the expensive side or their menus didn’t seem to offer something that all of us could eat. In the end we walked all the way back to the hotel and decided to put everything from the day away and then just eat in the lobby again, this time at their River North lounge. The food there was ok as well, but nothing spectacular, however the prices I felt were more on par with the food and its quality. The one thing I did not like was that the waiter simply stood by our table and kept engaging us in conversation as if he had nothing else to do and we weren’t trying to eat. I guess this may be because for a good portion of the time we were the only ones there, but still at least let us eat. After dinner we went back up to the room to start packing things up so we will be ready to leave in the morning. We will be going from the hotel to the Field Museum and then home from there, so we have to have everything packed and ready to check out in the morning.

Chicago Bound

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Today Kylie, Melissa, and I all piled in the Envoy and headed for Chicago. Out of the three of us I am the only one to never have been to Chicago. Kylie has already been there at least twice with Mommy and has even been to at least one of the places we plan to visit, Shedd Aquarium. As for Melissa, she has also been there a few times for various different reasons. None the less we are all looking forward to the rest of this trip. I say rest because we are already out here. 🙂 The drive went relatively well, we played a few games in the car to help pass the time and it wasn’t until we were already in Chicago that we ran in to a snag. We missed a turn and got off the expressway at the wrong exit and had to find our way to the hotel via my phone and Google Maps with GPS. Needless to say we found our way just fine and checked in to the hotel about 3pm local time. After getting everything in to the room and taking a minute to get settled we then decided to hop in a taxi (which Kylie loved) and headed over to Navy Pier. It was really neat to see the Pier and all the little shops that lined it. Walking through the mall of shops on the inside was nice, and the Smith Museum of Stained Glass had some amazing works in it. After walking around the Pier we decided we were all hungry, so we had dinner at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, which was a fun place with lots of music playing and the food was pretty good too. After we were done we decided to walk back to the hotel and we took a route that would take us to Michigan Ave so we could walk along part of the Magnificent Mile and see some of the sights along it. Tomorrow is going to be another long busy day.