Mar 06, 2005 23:35
Chicago Pictures
Spring Break in Chicago was so much fun, but way too short. We accomplished so much in the first two days, that by the last couple days, we were kinda out of things to do. Our train arrived in Chicago a little past 1pm, an hour later than it was supposed to. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel, and then met up with Stacey and Kim, who was nice enough to drive us to the Museum of Science and Industry. As soon as we started walking around the museum, I realized that I'd been there before, during the eighth grade field trip. Apparently, my memory is so bad, I can't even remember where I've been before. At the Museum of Science and Industry, we saw the Body Worlds exhibit. Basically, it's 200+ cadavers with their muscles, organs, and bones exposed. It was really surreal and slightly disturbing walking through the exhibit at first beceause the bodies are preserved with a plastic substance, so it makes it seem like everything is fake, but they're actually dead bodies. It was the most fascinating thing, though. Seeing the damage that certain diseases (i.e. lung cancer, arthritis) imparts on the body was really interesting. I thought that one of the most disturbing bodies on display was an 8 month pregnant woman, who donated her body because she had a disease and knew that she and her baby probably wouldn't survive. Her muscles were pulled away, and you could see the infant in her uterus. Another slightly disturbing body was a man who was holding his own skin. It reminded me of a bad alien movie, where the aliens unzip and step out of their human costumes or something. Except this was an actual human being.
The next day, we went up to the Skydeck of the Sears Tower. Nice views, but I don't think it was worth the $10.95 that I paid. Next, we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. Kim came with us too, which was really cool, because she knew where most of the paintings were, so we didn't have to spend too much time wandering around aimlessly. The highlight of the museum was definitely Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. We were actually able to go up close to it, and see the tiny dots that make up the painting. Also, the museum had four paintings by Rene Magritte, who is one of my favorite painters, so I was happy.
That night, we went to see the play "Sweet Charity". I've never been to a play (not a professional one, anyways), so I don't exactly have anything to compare the experience to, but I thought it was really good.
The next two days was all shopping. It was so great! I got a really cute pair of lounge pants from the Paul Frank store (I swear, they need to open one up in Michigan so that I don't have to choose my vacation destinations based on where the Paul Franks stores are located), a bunch of accessories from H&M, and a cute Le Sportsac tote and new sunglasses from Nordstrom Rack.
The only bad thing about the trip was the weather. The first night was 20 degrees and snowing. I stupidly decided to just wear my puffy vest outside, and now I've got a cold. We took a picture out in the snow, and you can see lit up trees in the background. It seriously looks like it's Christmas, but it's our spring break picture.