Site Seeing

Last Monday we saw some of the famous sites of Chicago. Dan's friend Jason was here interviewing for Medical School at the U of C, so we took him with us to a few attractions.

We first went to the National Museum of Science & Industry. Lucky for us, September is a free month for admissions! There we enjoyed seeing the first German Sub that the U.S. captured in WWII. That was the highlight of the museum for us, but I also liked the displays on the future of science. Pretty cool stuff. We spent about 3 hours at the museum.

Then we went to the Sears Tower, probably the most famous attraction in Chicago. It was a bit expensive to go up to the Skydeck ($12 per person I think), but it was really cool. Here are some facts about the Sears Tower:

It was the tallest building in the world from 1973 - 1998

It has more floors than any other building in the world (110 floors!)

Four states are visible from the top: Illinois (duh), Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin

Averages a six inch sway from the true center on windy days

Has a total of 16,100 windows

Operates some of the fastest elevators in the world, traveling at 1600 ft/minute

It is the tallest building in in North America, and the fifth tallest building in the world

Anyway, there were, of course, photographers who took your picture there and then sold them to you for an arm and a leg. We never buy things like that, but when we saw this we had to buy it for all the laughs:


Turns out, my shirt was the exact color of the background (bright green), so when they superimposed the photo behind us, my shirt turned into downtown Chicago :).

After the Sears Tower, we drove down to Navy Pier, but we didn't get out because parking was $19. It was beautiful though just driving down and looking across vast Lake Michigan.

We look forward to seeing many other fun sites here. It helps when visitors come, so feel free to come visit us whenever you can!