2 superheroes & a princess: day 65 of summer

Day #65: Sunday, July 27

We are back! We had a great trip to Chicago! It was lots of fun and we packed a lot of things into 4 days, but I am thankful to give my feet a rest! It was sooooooooooooooooo much walking {very similar to when we went to New York, but we didn't have to do it with kids then}. I am so proud of my kiddos for being such troopers and walking it all {well Ellie did a lot of "up top" on Ryan's shoulders} by themselves without any strollers the whole time! Chicago is a beautiful city and I felt like it was so much cleaner than New York City. I also loved seeing Lake Michigan again...I have fallen in love with the Great Lakes, they are beautiful and it makes me want to go back to Michigan again!

Let me start with some tips if you have never been to Chicago:

1. Museum of Science & Industry is the best and a must see!

2. If you are in the KC area you MUST get a pass to Union Station {or for you St. Louis area people get a pass to the Science Center...or find any pass to a participating ASTC member place in your area and purchase it!}. Why?? ASTC members have a travel program that allows you to get into participating places that are more than 90 miles from your local pass for FREE. So what does this mean....it means if you go to Chicago with your local membership than you can get into Museum of Science & Industry, Field Museum, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, AND the Planetarium {we didn't have time to get to that one} all for FREE. That's right, your whole family absolutely FREE! If you have visited these places you know that's a HUGE savings!

3. Public transportation in Chicago really confused us. I don't know if everyone else is confused by it, but we had lots of issues...and we never had a single problem on New York's subway. So before you visit let me tell you one thing...Chicago has a subway system "the L" that is ABOVE ground AND a train system both running through it. If you know that there are TWO different systems maybe you will be a little less confused then we were...we found this out on the last day. We stayed along Lake Michigan near Hyde Park, but our hotel was 5 miles from the center of most things. Not really a problem, we didn't want to be in the center of the craziness and we were able to drive to several locations. However, we don't mind using public transportation too because it is quick & easy {we thought}. Our second day we located a depot for what we thought was the L a short walk from our hotel. We had no problems getting on it, well after a 20 minute wait and we thought the L was supposed to come every 7 minutes, but thought it was weird that a train conductor came by punching tickets...not what usually happens on subways. Anyways, no biggie we got dropped off at the correct location still thinking we were on the subway system. The next day we try to take the "subway" {that was really the train} from the Museum one stop down from our hotel stop...we thought it would be a quick on and off. Well after missing the first one because we weren't far enough down on the platform?!, we got on the next one. Well it didn't make a stop at our hotel....we ended up having to take it all the way into downtown and then wait for one to take us all the way back...about a 2 hour mistake when we could have walked the distance in 30 minutes...ugh! So on the last day we were along Michigan Avenue and wanted to take the "subway" home...well apparently we were finally on the L this time. We were like wait this does look like a subway finally....I think we were taking the train all along. Well the problem with the subway system is that it's line runs a lot further in then where our hotel was located. So we stopped at the correct street, but it was about 2 miles further in then what we needed to be. The moral of this long story ;)...Chicago you really confuse people when both your "subway" and train systems are both on elevated above ground platforms that look very similar. Anyways, we survived and got to see a lot more of Chicago then we had planned :). And Avery's favorite part of the whole trip was getting to ride a train...a win I guess!

On to the first day of the trip...

We left "bright" and early at 5:15 am.