I'm a terrible blogger
I wanted a blog so bad, and now that I have one, I forget to write.
Last week was spring break and we went to Chicago. Katherine is dolphin crazy and we wanted to take her to Sea World, but the cost was just prohibitive - $85/person just to get in. So the best we could do was Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
Ok, my idea of vacation is leisure - dh's idea is go and go fast and early! So I'm up at 6 a.m. on our first day, that's earlier than I get up during a regular week!
Chicago is about a 5 hour drive, as long as you don't hit traffic and you have a good map - we didn't have a good map and we hit traffic. Toll roads, half the lanes were speed passes, half were cash, so, of course, we were always in a speed pass lane due to dh's inability to follow other cars; he always has to shift lanes to be in an open spot. Once we figured the pattern for cash lanes we did better. But our map, courtesy of Microsoft Streets and Trips, put us on the wrong road for the hotel. On a hunch, dh had me call the hotel to get the last directions and the woman said, "what are you doing on that highway?" Great, ok, we got the right directions and got there.
Our hotel was incredible - Marriot Residence Inn, a one bedroom suite. We knew we were getting a full breakfast with out room, but it turns out we also got a full dinner!
It's now about 2p.m. and heaven knows we don't want to waste a minute of daylight, so off we go to the Addler Planetarium. We bought a city pass, with the intention of seeing four attractions while we were there. So we saw the planetarium and then sat by the lake for a while and let Nikoli run around on the grass. We headed back to the hotel about 4:30 and it took us TWO HOURS to go the 25 miles to the hotel. I hated it and by the end the littlest thing could make me cry, but at least I didn't have a migraine. We ate and had a quiet evening.
Dh planned to be gone the whole day the next day and we were. The Shedd Aquarium first and Kath got to see her dolphin show. We also saw the beluga whale tank - I love those whales. We covered the entire aquarium and ate lunch there. About 2 p.m. we walked over to the Field Museum and saw Sue, the largest dinosaur ever. We took in the exhibits there. About 5 p.m. we went into downtown proper and ate at Big Bowl, a Chinese and Thai restaurant (that uses no MSG) that dh ate at when he was in Chicago on business last year. I've never had Thai food, and I got Pad Thai Shrimp and that is now my favorite food.
It only took us one hour to get home that night, we had searched google for better routes. Come to find out, we were right next to an arena and Justin Timberlake was performing there - there was a lot of traffic and limos, but we got around it.
Our final day there we went to the Museum of Science and Technology (Industry?). We didn't spend all day there and we were back at the hotel about 4 p.m.
All in all, a nice trip. Chicago downtown streets are confusing, the traffic is awful, people will walk right in front of your car to cross the street and don't care that they don't have the right of way, everyone honks their horn and no one thinks twice about going through red lights.
Two years ago we went to Houston and encountered traffic problems, lots of mismarked roads and just a lot of driving. We've been to LA and San Fransico and we've finally decided we don't want to go to big cities on vacation anymore. There was just too many people and too much traffic.
We can go to the beach or mountains.
