Sound Bites & Snap Shots

Hello, Chicago!  Thanks for opening your doors and welcoming us with some sunshine on this crisp Spring Saturday!

Soldier Field is at our backs and we are looking down upon a great urban skate park.

The skate park is part of Grant Park.  Folks took advantage of the sunshine to get some boarding in and ran along the lakefront.

We spent the day at the Field Museum.  Similar in style to the Natural History Museum in NYC, it has a style and flair all its own.  We used our membership at the Evansville Museum and upgraded our tickets to include two of the three special exhibits—The Vikings and Underground Adventures—and add a new 3D movie about the Galapagos Islands. 

The exhibit halls offered so much to see.  Of special note for us were the Grainger Hall of Gems, the Hall of Jades, the Lichen and the extinct animals.  As I look back at the website, I realize we saw A LOT and yet only scraped the surface. 

This whole wall was full of the snapshots of various animals and Mason zoomed in immediately upon one of his favorites. 

Walker, also know as The Frog Kid, cupped his hands around his favorite picture.

There was so much to see and admire at the museum but the thing that garnered the most praise from Walker was this a/v set up.  He walked around the entire museum noting the way technology was integrated in teaching and museum exhibition.  Yes, he is a tech junkie.

There was also a display that tipped its hat to the museum destruction in Iraq.  

Midway through our day, we stopped for lunch. Now, let me interject that our trip was inspired by Bill’s desire to introduce the boys to the Field Museum and by our wish to eat at as many restaurants we could from Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.   To that aim, we chose Eleven City Diner for lunch.  Eleven is a hybrid of old school diners and Jewish delicatessens. We knew everyone would be able to find something to satisfy.

That “clean” plate held the cheese fries which Mason declared the best he had ever had.  The sauce was made from Wisconsin cheese and the fries were dusted with some sort of seasoning.  For lunch Mason chose macaroni and cheese with bacon, Bill had Jeff Garlin’s Veggie Cobb Salad, Walker had a French Dip sandwich and I ordered a Magic Shroom Burger.  There were no leftovers to be seen and I forgot to take pictures of the meal before we dove in.  I declare this a restaurant that needs another visit.  There were so many other dishes we all wanted to try. 

At the crossroads, go right back to the museum or left back to the skate park.

Doesn’t it look more like Walker is at the beach than at the Traveling the Pacific exhibit?

Just before we went in for the Galapagos movie, we stopped for a little afternoon refreshment.  Walker was intrigued by the way the Sprite and Pepsi mixed.  Cheers!  Side note, a woman sat down next to us who was a graduate student at UCI.  We had a nice chat.  She was so young.  I felt so old.

After closing down the museum, we headed off to the BopNGrill.  This was another one we had watched on TV.  Walker ordered the signature burger that we saw prepared on TV—the umami.  This was a burger patty topped with truffled mushroom duxelle, sun dried tomato confit, togarashi mayo, bacon and gouda.  Bill had bulkogi, a marinated Korean bbq sliced ribeye steak with rice, a side salad and kimchi.  I chose the kimchi burger which had kimchi, a fried egg, American cheese, bacon, togarashi mayo and shredded cabbage.  It quickly became a fork and knife meal when the egg yolk oozed all over my hand.  Messy, but good!  Finally, Mason ordered a bacon cheeseburger on a pretzel bun and cheese fries.  He gave double thumbs up to the burger and mild reviews to the cheese fries.  I personally liked the fries better here because they were slightly battered. 

By the time all was said and done, we were ready to drive back to our hotel in Tinley Park and retire for the night.  It was a long and satisfying day of exploration and alimentation.