We recently had a long trip to Niagara, New York and Washington DC, photos of which I will be uploading soon, but before that we had short but sweet trip to Chicago on 28th and 29th September. Here is the link of Chicago tour photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bharat7480/AaiBabaUSTripChicago#
As always for those of my friends who take interest in reading the trip details here is short summary.
We left Ottumwa Friday evening (27th Sep) starting our journey to Dubuque (Iowa). My friend Snehal from John Deere India was on business trip to Dubuque and she joined us for this Chicago trip. We reached Dubuque right about dinner time and found delicious food (prepared by Snehal and her friend Kalyani) waiting for us.
We did some planning of what we need to see in Chicago for next two days and then rushed to the beds to take a sufficient sleep before we get up early next day.
Satuday was Sankashti Chaturthi (auspicious day of Lord Ganesha on which usually Maharashtrian people observe fast), so Snehal and Mom prepared special “fast food” early in the morning. We started our journey to Chicago after having “fast snacks” (Sabudana Khichadi ani Babatyachi Bhaji).
We reached Chicago at around noon and parked our car at private parking area. We walked towards the Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears Tower. This is 108 story building and held record of world’s tallest building since 1974 to 1998) to see the beautiful view of Chicago city from special skydeck. But we only found that there is already a queue of about 1.5 hours ahead of us to get to the skydeck. Then we decided to come back after some time and cover Millennium park meanwhile. Millennium Park is a public park in Chicago and a prominent tourist attraction. This park features the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the Lurie Garden and other attractions. The cloud gate sculpture is designed by Indian born British architect Anish Kapoor. After taking lots of photos at Millennium Park, we again turned our feet to the Willis tower just to find it still crowded as we left it. We then decided to drop a plan to reach the skydeck and instead preferred later John Hancock building observatory (100 story tall skyscraper) to sooth our eyes with classic view of Chicago city and Michigan Lake. The beautiful sunset, the night view of the Chicago city including the lakeshore drive from the 94th story of John Hancock building proved worthwhile. Before going to John Hancock we took architectural boat tour. The tour guide was talking continuously for about 1 hour describing each and every building standing tall on the shores of Chicago River. We strolled for a while at Navy Pier as well before going to Hancock. (Its 1 km long pier along the shoreline of Lake Michigan in Chicago, build in 1916 and busiest attraction in Chicago). We also visited Buckingham fountain which was beautifully decorated with night lighting. We then watched the fireworks, and took a cab to reach “India Garden” where delicious dinner helped us end our sankashti charuthi fast. Trouble to find our parking spot and traffic on the way to our night stay motel added little frustration to end the day.
The next day, we visited the “Shedd Aquarium”. It’s a indoor aquarium built in 1930 and is a house of many aquatic animals including beluga whales, White-sided dolphins, reef, eel, turtles, Anaconda, sharks, sting rays etc. etc. etc…. Special things to mention about Shedd Aquarium were 4D movie and whale and dolphin show. It took us almost 6 hours to cover that big aquarium. Also can’t forget to mention, we got a chance to see the “Granddad”. It’s an Australian Lungfish who is atleast 86 years old and deserve the name “Granddad”. We wished him long life and started our journey back to Dubuque. We reached little late in the evening to Dubuque so decided to stay there in the night. Next day early dawn, on a goodbye note to Snehal we drove back to Ottumwa. It was really a nice trip with Snehal and Mom and Dad and we all enjoyed a lot.
Thanks again for patiently reading it till end. Enjoy the photos…. Cheers….
http://picasaweb.google.com/bharat7480/AaiBabaUSTripChicago#
Regards,
Bharat
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