chicago day 1

Saturday, October 14, 2006

At 1am, I met up with guojun, ryan and zhang xi to embark on our journey to the west. er, northwest. Haha.. a 5+ hour ride to chicago with 3 china men! [No, i don't mean that in any derogatory sense at all, i just mean they are from china and i find that expression cuter heh. in fact i have deep respect for them.]

We stopped in between for my long lost friend mc griddle + hot chocolate, and finally we reached the windy city. I originally thought it was named that simply cos it was windy there! but apparently a boat tour guide mentioned that it was so called cos when they wanted chicago to host some World's Fair thing, the supporters were very long winded in putting in good words for chicago. Well if it was in singaporean lingo, it would probably be called the 'smoky city'. heehee.

My first glimpse

Millenium Park

We emerged at grant park after parking at a $13-for-13hours garage in East Monroe Street, thanks to daniel who found it. Quite lihai, cos the garages right next to it charged $13 PER HOUR! Also part of Millenium park, we saw very pretty skyline and flora. Oh, it was freeezing btw. Luckily I brought lok sum's pink wool sweater and my thermal underpants. And gloves, scarve, beanie. Heh.. lent my beanie to zhang xi though.

We approached the BEAN. haha i don't even remember what its name is. ok, it's Cloud Gate. When I saw the description ['kidney bean shaped sculpture'] before going there i thought wth that is so stupid. But as i saw it i was amazed. it was such a beauty! Most beautiful thing I saw there.

the underneath of the bean. amazing right?

4 trigger crazy idiots

It's damn clever. The convex structure takes in the reflection of a paranomic view! It's like a paranomic lens or something.. Damn cool and it helps you take photo of the whole chicago skyline with your normal camera.. lihai ba!

getting high already

Pritzker Pavilion, centerpiece of millenium park though I think the bean is 20 times cooler.

Chicago visitor's cultural centre or something. It has the words 'Chicago Public Library' on it though. Wasn't open yet.

Crown Fountain, There're 2 of these blocks, each with a LCD screen which well, shows different things. it was showing a waterfall when i was there, n there were dead pixel blocks though so quite sian diao.

near the Chicago Art Museum

beautiful lamppost outside the art museum

Chicago art museum

random rusty fountain statue

miss me? ha!!

Buckingham Fountain

a rainbow to greet us

Field Museum

We walked along the lake towards the Field Museum. There was a king tut exhibition but too bad the tickets were sold out! boo. I paid for entrance to a mendel exhibition [act geeky] and some evolutionary planet exhibit. And we went in. The mendel exhibition was pretty boring and small, nothing that I didn't already know [haha yah right] but well it was interesting to see the instruments actually used by mendel, such as his microscope [damn chio] and.. can't remember liao. But all these old old instruments, very mei!

sue, the most complete t-rex skeleton found to date.

sue's actual head!! yikes. wonder how many poor lil dinos have gone past those teeth. Well the skull is here cos it's too heavy to be mounted on the whole dino skeleton thing.

pretty photo found at the end of the 'evolutionary planet' exhibit. Oh! I was so tired during the exhibit that I started to feel dizzy and I happily sat in one of the movie theatres and fell asleep. Deep sleep summore. Totally no image!! muahaha. Did feel a lil better after my nap. heehee.

The exhibit showed the different life forms since, er, the beginning of time? Pretty interesting to see the different creatures, some eerie, some cute. Dunno why I didn't take photos though, I was too dizzy-sleepy-hungry-thirsty to take photos i suppose. Ha must be my phobia of getting ticked off by the workers [even though they allowed it for most exhibits]

a lot of pple go to the museum! Ive always thought that museums were the most boring places around. Well but to justify the money and time I spent in there, it is pretty interesting to see the actual skeletons and fossils, and actual burial items, cloths, instruments used by well, people. i was wowed away by this skeleton of a HUGE sloth about the height of, 1.5 storeys. my god! i can't imagine them roaming the earth!

We then walked back to michigan avenue where the main city buildings were.

i think thats a policeman.. haha they actually have horses around here and there, and you can see droppings on the ground too.. damn weird.

Wendella Boats River Architecture Tour

i totally wasted my $20. It was so damn cold and i was so tired I fell asleep promptly, and as hard as i tried to keep awake I couldn't.. so sorry, i wont be able to tell you anything interesting about the architecture at all haha.

corn cob buildings

What fascinated me was how clean the river was! If you notice, it's green! So pretty. And to think that it used to be very polluted. I caught something about letting the water flow back into the river to make it clean or something. Damn interesting, I mean after how long our spore river still so smelly and dirty. Well even our beaches are smelly and dirty.

Another interesting thing was the bridges, they actually open up to allow boats that have a high mast to go through, stopping all the traffic! Damn nonsense! Especially along michigan ave where there is so much traffic, they still do that.. Show you guys when I have picts.

my ranch crispy chicken sandwich and coffee. entire meal was swiftly gobbled down. how huh I now can eat a whole macs meal easily.. monster paw

After lunch, we walked down rush st to find guojun's Diesel shop to source for some super expensive jeans which weren't there. Too bad.. and for making us walk so much, he decided to pay for the cab fare back to our car..

in the cab

University of Chicago

After retrieving our car, we drove for ~7miles to reach the University of Chicago. This place is famous for many nobel prize winners for economics! Don't know who though. haha.

Rockefeller Chapel

Hosted on Zooomr

i love the doors.

We spent some time looking for the economics department but no one seemed to know what it was even though it was supposed to be so famous and nobel laureate producing. Walked about 2 rounds around before we decided to go get dinner at one of the lil cafes on campus selling asian noodles. They sold all sorts of noodle, thai, japanese, chinese, even Singaporean beehoon. ha!

Oh, and guess what's a pot-sticker? Haha.. it is guo tie! so cute.

dinner was curry noodle.. looks like pasta, but it was pretty good.

Buckingham Fountain - at night

Wah! haha. I preferred the rainbow in the day though. I surprised them by whipping out my tripod which was extendable to waist height.. luckily I got to use it! whee!

taken from the buckingham fountains.

Union Station

this is an amtrak station. can you imagine an MRT station looking like this? heehee.

i love cute lampposts

Travelling with guojun, zhangxi and ryan is no joke. They really do their research and plan every single place they wanna go, and they make sure they can go! That means lots of briskwalking everywhere, hasty decisions for food and being freaking tired the whole day. Like ryan said, it's travelling, not vacation. Well it is pretty gratifying to know that you've been to so many of the "must-see" places. Just that if I planned a vacation I usually end up slacking, sleeping late and seeing much less places than I should.. oops..

They are also very amazing in the sense that they are damn arty farty, they know so much history, art, literature and i'm not just talking about chinese literature/history. they actually are so into art and they love the museums so much. haha i feel so barbaric and 'wen2 mang2' next to them, dunno how to appreciate such culture stuff. go to museum and sleep only. =p They're also very willing to share their knowledge, which is real cool haha.. although when they try to tell me stories in chinese i have to stop them half the time to ask them what they are saying. sigh.