The title of this blog is dedicated to the weather today, which was foggy all day with a chill in the air that was so similar to the weather we hated so much in San Francisco. However today it was actually an oddly pleasant change from the hot and humid hell Chicago was yesterday. (It's honestly the greatest shift in weather I've ever experienced.) So all the outdoor photos today are pretty much of fog. I wanted to get an awesome photo of the Sears Tower (yes I know it's now the Willis, I just don't care) because the top was poking up through the fog but I couldn't get it right.
We spent all day at the Field Museum complex. We did the Aquarium yesterday so today headed off to the Adler Planetarium and the actual Field Museum. The Planetarium was really good, and we spent most of all day there. I think it helped that we hadn't really seen a lot of that stuff at other museums so it was new and interesting. One thing we particularly enjoyed was the Atwood Sphere experience. You go on a little cart and it takes you inside a sphere that recreates the Chicago night sky as it was in 1913. So all the constellations and the North Star etc were visible (well the ones that were visible at the time, eg not all the zodiac constellations were). We were lucky to be the only two on our "ride" so we were able to have a good chat with the guide about the differences in what we see at night compared to this. I was all impressed that I recognised some of the constellations without ever having actually seen them in real life. You could also see and touch part of a meteorite that had fallen from Mars so that was pretty cool. I did get huffy at how much more intelligent all these medieval guys with astrolabes and sundials were than me though.
We then walked through the freezing cold to the Field Museum, mostly to see Sue the T-Rex. Sue is the most complete (around 90%) skeleton ever discovered of a T-Rex, including her massive head. (So massive they can't store it on the actual display because it is too heavy.) They had a cool Ancient Egypt Exhibition which included a replica of a tomb, which featured actual walls and a lot of mummies. I think I'm a bit funny with mummies though, I feel fascinated but also kind of horrible when looking at them. They were buried with such ceremony and care by loved ones, and now they are paraded for gawkers, it feels kind of disrespectful. There was also a special Genghis Khan exhibit.
We didn't stay too long at the museum because I was exhausted and we'd seen a lot of the museums exhibits (or close to) at other museums in recent years.
We met my friend Ginger and her husband for dinner again tonight, going to a Mexican place called Xoco, which is owned by Rick Bayliss (who won Top Chef Masters) and a chef I follow on tv etc. After dinner we walked to a cinema for the opening night showing of The Avengers. It was such a fun movie, lots of genuinely funny one liners etc. If you see it, stay till the very end. A different experience for us though as people clapped and cheered through it, which isn't something you see a lot of in Australian cinemas. It was so nice to spend time with another couple.
It was another good day in Chicago, tomorrow's our last day here and we plan on taking it very easy.
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