It was a noisy night since the street was next to a freeway but it wasn’t too bad. Our parking spot had the benefit of being right next to the Racine light rail stop so in the morning we just walked over to the rail station and took the rail 20 minutes into the center of Chicago where we went to Millennium Park. The first thing we came upon was Crown fountain, two large rectangular blocks with water streaming from the top and a giant video face projected from one side. The faces were videos, moved and even cooler, they would occasionally spit out water from their mouths.
After that we went to one of the most famous Chicago landmarks, the Cloud Gate or as it is more popularly known “The Bean”. The Bean is a huge silver bean polished to a reflective surface and is a very popular spot for pictures.
By the time we finished taking our pictures it was time for lunch and we walked to the nearby Giordano’s for some famous Chicago Deep dish pizza. The line was out the door and it takes about 45 minutes to make a deep dish pizza but they had a system where they could send you a text when your table was ready and you could pre-order your pizza so it would be ready faster once you were seated. We gave them our number, placed an order for a small meat and more meat pizza and then we outside where they happened to be having an art exhibition going on with a number of booth with various artists selling their art. One of the benefits of being in the big city is that there is always something going on.
Soon enough we got our table and our pizza arrived not long afterwards along with a chopped chicken salad. Both were delicious. The chopped salad had finely chopped lettuce, tomatoes, bacon, blue cheese, small macaroni, tender chicken bits, diced red onion, diced red cabbage tossed with a honey mustard sauce. The salad was diced so small that it might be better eaten with a spoon than a fork. Then came the pizza. Over two inches thick it was loaded with super stringy cheese, pepperoni, sausage, salami, bacon and tomato sauce. The crust was slightly crunchy but not hard. The small only had six slices but was recommended to feed two to three people. It certainly filled the three of us up.
After lunch we walked over to the Riverwalk to admire the various skyscrapers and the river. It was a warm, rather humid day so we went to a Peet’s Coffee in the iconic Wrigley Building to hang out for a while and do a little bit of homeschooling. Refreshed we went out to explore some more, stopping by Molly’s cupcakes, a fun cupcake store with swing chairs before finally getting to Navy Pier.
Navy Pier is the only pier in Chicago and is an entertainment pier with shops, restaurants, amusement rides a hotel and a children’s museum. Navy Pier turned out to be a bit of a disappointment as the children’s museum closed at 5, just after we arrived at the pier and there were only six overpriced amusement rides. The small kids rides cost over $5 and the large Ferris wheel cost $18 per person. We settled for a single teacup ride for Olivia before calling it a day and heading back to Rover for the night.
