The Windy City

Our two-year anniversary celebration. We left the apartment at 9:30am, Eli in tow, and used buses and trains to visit the Shedd Aquarium, Spice House in Old Town, Dunkin Donuts to feed Eli, Millennium Park, the Art Museum and a Wildfire restaurant on north of downtown. All in one day without the aid of a GPS or iPhone. Not bad for having an infant along. We’ve found kids make it a little more difficult to travel but not impossible. You just have to be flexible.

Wednesday night we went to our good friend Jordan’s apartment on the north side of Chicago. We ate dinner, caught up, had our first taste of our home brew (quite nice), and Jordan got to hold Eli. It was great to catch up as it had been a year since we’ve seen Jordan. A lot happens in a year. Thursday Jordan left to go to back to Iowa to be with his wife and generously let use their apartment Thursday night.

At the Aquarium we were led by “spirit guides” (aka women in funny looking costumes interpretive dancing) through their special presentation of “FantaSea”. Penguins walked around in the crowd, beluga whales did tricks, and dolphins did their usual flips. They even had a lady in a canoe come from behind the crowd and lower into the pool from the roof. It was quite the show.

In the evening we spent a couple hours walking through the new modern art wing of the Chicago Art Museum. I cannot say I appreciate modern art. One room had a huge cluster of fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling and sheet rock on the ground with a random pattern of holes smashed in it. Another was white canvas on the wall. Really? By far the strangest and most disturbing was the “crazy clown room”. Six screens were set up, one on each sidewall and four on the front wall with a 30-minute loop of a clown doing different creepy things. One screen had the clown tugging on some broom or stick hang off the ceiling, another had the clown sitting on the ground with his legs out front hitting his toes together, and to top it off one had a clown sitting on a toilet in a bathroom stall stuffing toilet paper in between the pages of a magazine. To top off the creepiness a the sound of the clown crying, grunting and screeching was coming from the speakers. By far best part of the night was watching people looking at the “art” confused, shocked, or laughing and then turn to see Eli and have look at him with smiles and admiration. Both the working man (aka security guards) and art connoisseurs look at Eli with awe. The Creator made Eli much more beautiful and intricate than anything man put on those walls (or floor in some cases).