Spring break, woo hoo! We took the week of March 14th off for spring break and Rose went with her friends to Puerto Rico while Cynthia, Emily, and I went to Chicago. It was a fun week, but first a picture of Rose and some of her friends before the WPA dance:
Rose, Kaylin, and her crew flew out of Chicago to Atlanta and then on to San Jose. It was kind of a long flight out over the Atlantic:
When she arrived she saw this and didn't know what it was. Not understanding what this was made it a lot funnier. Also, even though Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, it doesn't abide by U.S. laws, so pretty much anything goes there:
There were chickens and lizards roaming about everywhere, which I'm sure was weird, but the scenery looked pretty great:
This picture was taken from the balcony of the apartment where she was staying:
They spent lots of time at the beach, but also visited historical sites like a church built in the 1500s and went zip lining, too. Rose zip lining upside down:
In Chicago we stayed in an Airbnb that was almost identical to the apartment where I lived as a kid. Our first morning we went on a boat tour down the Chicago River. During the tour we passed the Marina Towers which are all parking ramps on the lower levels. You can kinda see a red car sticking out on one of the lower levels. When filming the movie "The Hunter" with Steve McQueen they drove a car off this parking ramp into the river:
You can see Willis (pronounced "Sears") Tower peaking between a couple buildings:
The Civic Opera building:
I don't remember what this building is called, but I like the reflections:
This building has condos at the top. Because of the wavy lines the building doesn't have as much stability as it would if it had straight lines, so they had to leave two floors open near the top to allow wind to pass through. This reduces the swaying at the top, reducing the likelihood of people living in the top floor condos from getting motion sickness:
This curvy building wasn't supposed to be built here. It's actually illegal to build any towers east of Lake Shore Drive, but the company that built it decided it was easier to apologize than to ask permission and for some reason no one stopped them. Brazen move:
The Museum of Illusions is a real place and we visited for the first time. Gravity and the laws of physics mean nothing there:
There were some really trippy rooms that were too dark to take decent pictures, including a hallway that rotates around you while you walk through it. It was nearly impossible to stay upright, even though the floor wasn't moving.
Too many Nodlands:
I took a few pictures of the Airbnb because it had almost exactly the same layout as the house where I used to live in Edgewater. It's decorated much differently, but otherwise it's very similar. The cassettes on the dining room wall were a cool idea:
A few pictures from the day we visited Millennium Park:
Everybody likes the bean. Far out, man:
For lunch, we walked across the street from Millennium Park to Wildberry Pancakes where they serve... pancakes. Really good pancakes. Just down the street is the building from "Adventures in Babysitting":
And we went to Shedd Aquarium, which is always changing and always fascinating:
The dolphin shows are free now, so we got to watch the show for the first time:
We did lots of exploring and ate some good food. Our last day we visited my old house in Edgewater. The houses look the same, but the neighborhood has changed a lot. When I was a kid there was a pine tree in the front yard:
