Mike and I spent a lit­tle time in Chica­go about a week ago :D Here’s our view from the top of the Willis Tow­er, using the Zumi. It also cap­tured a pret­ty nice pho­to of the impres­sive columns at the Muse­um of Sci­ence and Indus­try…

… and oth­er impres­sive archi­tec­ture in the city.

We got a pass to var­i­ous muse­ums and city attrac­tions, so we vis­it­ed eight places in six days. It was more walk­ing than I would do in a month in my home city, but def­i­nite­ly worth the effort to see all the new and won­der­ful things I’ve nev­er seen before :D

I loved the minia­ture dio­ra­mas at the Field Muse­um. Here’s one about mum­mi­fi­ca­tion that I espe­cial­ly like, main­ly because I love how the light is fil­tered into the space. I could imag­ine peo­ple work­ing on a hot sun­ny day, qui­et­ly and solemn­ly wrap­ping the body in strips of cloth.

Also at the Field Muse­um — a sloth! A giant tree sloth!!

Yup. I want to be a bar­na­cle when I grow up.

Beau­ti­ful jel­ly fish at the Shedd Aquar­i­um. I took many pic­tures and videos of them.

Don’t these green corals look knitted?

The sun fil­ter­ing through the lily pads.

Mar­veled at more impres­sive archi­tec­ture as we walked and took the tran­sit around the city…

One of the train sta­tions we fre­quent­ed. They looked much old­er than the Toron­to ones.

Owls at the Wash­ing­ton Harold Library! They remind me of the Guardians of Ga’hoole. This one in par­tic­u­lar is kind of say­ing, “what you doing walk­ing around and not read­ing a book?”

Cloud Gate is a must-see :D 

I’ve read about Cloud Gate in art his­to­ry books but nev­er ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed it until I saw it in per­son. See­ing the hun­dreds of peo­ple walk­ing around it and inter­act­ing with it, all intrigued by their own reflec­tions, makes me real­ize how clever a pub­lic art piece it is. It’s a sculp­ture that inter­acts with every­thing in its envi­ron­ment; it sits per­fect­ly still yet it active­ly invites peo­ple in its envi­ron­ment to inter­act with it.

Speak­ing of things I’ve read in art his­to­ry books, we also vis­it­ed the Frank Lloyd Wright home and stu­dio. I did­n’t buy the pass to take pho­tos of the inte­ri­or, but here I found the tallest, largest gink­go tree I’ve ever seen! I so want­ed to offer a hug but there was a flower bed around it :(

And here’s an amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty art piece at one of the train sta­tions, called Hopes and Dreams. It’s made by the peo­ple who vis­it­ed the var­i­ous muse­ums dur­ing the sum­mer of 1999, at the turn of the cen­tu­ry. There’s a nice write-up about it here.

This is from the Adler Plan­e­tar­i­um, ear­ly draw­ings by astronomers to record what they saw in the sky. I took a pho­to of it because I thought it would make a nice embroi­dery pattern.

We also went to the Jane Addams’ Hull-House Muse­um, one of the first set­tle­ment hous­es in North Amer­i­ca, I believe. Did­n’t take many pho­tos there, but I bought a book that was part of the Alter­na­tive Label­ing Project at the muse­um, which I just found out that it is entire­ly online! So you can read it too, Jane Addams’ Trav­el Med­i­cine Kit by Ter­ri Kapsalis. It’s a very short read and I high­ly rec­om­mend it. This is a quote from the book that I real­ly like:

There are many ways to arrive at an under­stand­ing. We must not con­flate bril­liance with ease and com­fort. Trem­bling knees and an unre­lent­ing sense of fail­ure is one way forward.

All in all we had the most won­der­ful time in the windy city. We even cel­e­brat­ed our 6th anniver­sary with deep dish piz­za and root beer! :D

 

Feel­ing blessed to be able to trav­el and see things, and to have a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple to share trav­el­ing pho­tos with! :D Thank you so much for visiting!