We drove an hour and a half to the Museum of Science and Industry where we got a year membership for $145 for all three of us. The membership allowed unlimited admission to not only the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry but was partnered through the ASTC program to allow admission for many museums and children’s museums around the country. As tickets to museums generally cost $20-$30 per person we expect that this will save us a lot of money in the future as we travel around the country.
The Museum of Science in Chicago is HUGE. We arrived just after lunch and spent over five hours there and got through less than half the museum. There were many interesting exhibits such as an actual German U-Boat, a real train, a Boeing 727 passenger jet and a huge tornado simulator.
The membership included tickets to a giant domed theater show where we watched a short movie about dogs. Leora and the girls arrived just as the museum was closing and we ended up just hanging around the parking lot. The girls got along very well and had a great time just hanging out until it got dark and we returned to our parking spot by the freeway.
Since we now had a membership we returned to the Museum of Science again the next day to see the rest of it. It really is an excellent museum with a large body section showing fetuses in various states of development from a tiny dot you can barely see to full term. It really is a school day for Olivia when we go the a museum. We also went through a mirror maze and saw a huge model of Chicago with many model trains. There was even a large very fancy doll house castle.
Leora showed up just before closing and afterwards we hung out in the parking lot a bit. A hot dog vendor and a snow cone vender was in the parking lot so I enjoyed a Chicago hot dog, and the girls each got a $1 snow cone. Afterwards we all went to Chinatown to walk around a bit. Strangely enough Leora’s daughters had never been to Chinatown even though they live in Chicago. This was a case of the out of town tourists showing the locals around their own town. It was after 10pm again before we returned to our parking spot by the freeway. This has been a rather unusual week for us since we rarely go out late in the evening. There are not usually too many kid friendly things to do in the late evenings so we don’t go out too much. However Leora seems to like being out in the evenings and there are always things to do in the big city so our schedule has changed drastically.
