Vacation, Day 5

Our day began with the trainride (again) into the city, but this time we took a cab from Union Station to the Field Museum. The Field is across the street from Soldier Field (where da Bears play for you non-football fans). The bronze plaque truly is a beauty, even if you're not a Bears fan.

It's also huge, as referenced here by comparing children who are approximately 5 feet tall to the entire plaque. I would encourage you to click on the photos to see more detail of the plaque.

After the obligatory Soldier Field photos, we walked across the street to the Field Museum - ahh yes, that destination which prompted our return to Chicago in the first place. This was our only planned activity for the day because we know that there was a lot of uncovered ground to discover from our first trip in May. And indeed, we were not disappointed.

We trekked our way through the "dead zoo", encountering just about any kind of animal you can imagine while learning bits of interesting trivia (most of which we promptly forgot) along the way.

Animals gave way to reptiles and insects which gave way to the formation of islands which gave way to ancient cultures. It seemed like a never ending maze through the various exhibits and we had no clue where we were in relation to the "common areas" of the museum (ie restrooms, guest services, etc).

We were fortunate enough to see this spiritual lodge. It had been reconstructed inside the museum and visitors were allowed to enter the structure but they had to take off their shoes to do so.

The exterior of the lodge was ornately carved on every possible surface with these "face" designs, complete with metal disks added for the eyes. It was a remarkable piece of art.

We also had the opportunity to see a Pawnee Lodge, although we were not able to enter it as there were posted hours for this exhibit and we did not arrive at the exhibit during the posted hours.


Additionally, we got to see a great depiction of life in a Chicago Region Village at harvest time. Girl child was fascinated with this display and tried to capture it from every possible angle. However, the lighting in many of the exhibits made it difficult to get good photos with our cameras.

We got a closer look at "Sue" on this trip. Not only did we see the assembled skeleton, we learned that the head on the skeleton isn't really Sue's head, but is instead a much lighter replication because there was no way to support the actual head in the display. After seeing the real skull, it's easy to see how it could be so heavy.

Boychild even spent a good deal of time examining it from all angles.

After exhausting ourselves at the museum once again, we took our last train ride for this vacation. Instead of peering outside the window and noticing all of the things they had not seen on a previous trip, they immersed themselves in their books and declared that they were glad they didn't have to get up and take the train in the morning. Boychild even wondered how people did this every single day. Welcome to big city life, boy. The kids were quite surprised to find out that I had made this commute on a daily basis after graduating from college. Of course I had the opposite - outbound in the morning and inbound in the evening.

When we got back to Schaumburg, we decided to see what restaurants were near the hotel. Given that the mall was within a stone throw, we decided that would be a logical place to look for food. We decided to check out a place we'd never heard of before - The Rain Forest Cafe.

There was plenty of scenery to keep our attentions occupied. The apes you see in the picture were mechanical and would move every 10 minutes. It was a bit freaky actually, if you weren't prepared for it. There were also dolphins jumping out of water that actually sprayed a mist into the air so you felt like you were near the water. The lights, of course, were low. Trees everywhere. Plenty of tropical fish in tanks ranging from your standard large squarish tank to an archway filled with colorful swimmers that you had to walk under to enter the restaurant.

Unfortunately, the atmosphere was about the only great thing about the place.


Now we're not saying that you shouldn't try Rainforest Cafe for yourself, but we were not impressed with quantity for price, quality for price, poor service and excessive noise. True, a rainforest is noisy, but it was near impossible to hold any kind of conversation with the music adding to the din. At this point, boychild just wanted me to put the camera away and stop taking his picture.

Girlchild was a bit more mellow about the experience and was game to get up and explore the restaurant (as we were invited to do). Good thing since we had to wait about 45 minutes for dinner to be served after it was ordered.

After dinner we checked out the candy store just across the door from the restaurant. Never before had the kids seen so many kinds of candy all in the same place. We got a little bit of several different treats to share when we got home. And if the decision making skills weren't already taxed by "chocolate or vanilla", they also got overwhelmed by the 31 flavors when we stopped for ice cream on the way back to the car. Everyone was satisfied with their choices in the end.

In spite of our less than positive experience with dinner it was a great vacation. We got up the next morning, enjoyed the breakfast buffet at the hotel and took our time packing up before heading home.

Most of our trip was spent with faces looking like this:

I guess that means it was totally worth it!