Book Bucket List | Chicago Trip!

View from the Metra Station

I'm going to take a page out of Rena's book (rather blog) this week and talk about the trip I took on my vacation. This past weekend, I was lucky enough to be able to visit family in Chicagoland.  Sure, I was made fun of for thinking that 30 degrees was cold, but it was fun nonetheless.  My family lives about 45 minutes out of Chicago in the country, but we were only a short train ride away from the city. 

Harold Washington Library

The first day, I checked out the Harold Washington Library.  It was huge! It was 9 stories in a beautiful building with a giant atrium on top. They also had giant owls hanging off the corners of the building like gargoyles. Their children's area is very similar to the Chavez Central Library's and was filled with a ton of class visits from different schools.  It was fun to watch all the kids interact. (And yes, I did hear "Do you have Diary of a Wimpy Kid?"  They also had a new teen center and innovation lab.  In their fiction area, they had a display featuring Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.  It's about all of the drama and actual events of a serial killer and the 1893 World's Fair.

Lions Guarding the Art Institute

That day I also went to The Art Institute of Chicago where we had lunch at their amazing restaurant and spent the afternoon looking at their collection.  It's impossible to go through the entire museum in one trip.  I've been before and barely got through half of it, and it still felt rushed.  My favorites this time were the Georgia O'Keefes and Salvador Dalis

Sue says Hi!

The next day, I visited The Field Museum.  I really love this place.  What's better than walking in a building where there's a giant T-Rex in the middle of the room?  That T-Rex's name is Sue and she is the world's most complete T-Rex skeleton, as the museum has 90% of her bones together.  It's a really impressive sight, and seeing those teeth close up is rather intimidating.  They had this awesome 3D movie about the world Sue lived in and what she would have been like.  So cool!  At our library, we just got in Scaly, Spotted, Feathered, Frilled by Catherine Thimmesh.  It's all about what dinosaurs really looked like when they were roaming the Earth, just like the movie at the museum.

It was a very busy trip between these stops and eating pretty much nonstop.  Chicago was a very fun city to explore!