Shedd Aquarium

Before we went into the Aquarium, we bought the kids hot dogs from a street vendor. Wanted them to taste Chicago style hot dogs. Although they were good, not so sure I could not whip up the same ones here in Louisville, in my kitchen. What IS the definition of a real Chicago style hot dog?

The Aquarium was a rather uneventful day. It was a huge building with huge tanks of fish, sharks, eels, etc. I have yet to see an aquarium house an Octopus. What's up with that? The one cool thing that we did get to experience was 4D. The newest trend in movies is 4D. It's basically watching a 3D movie, but with some added special, real life effects. We went in to see some clips from Earth Day. It started out like a normal 3D movie. Polar Bears seeming to plunge towards us, a sharks nose that I thought was right above my head. But the first treat came when the Polar Bear caused a small avalanche when he was sliding down a snow covered hill. As the snow fell down the mountain, my seat rumbled, and made me feel like I was falling with the snow. The 2nd thrill came when the movie was talking about sharks and they were explained how they had to harpoon a shark. As the harpoon lunged towards the shark, something came out of the back of my seat and poked me! Harpooned me!! Yikes! Then just seconds later, as the shark dove in the water, droplets of water came splashing in my face. This was the coolest thing that I had ever experienced. If all 4D movies are made to include these effects and more, I will definitely pay to go see them. Spent most of the day in the Aquarium. We actually closed it down at 5:00 (they asked us to leave).

Left the Aquarium, took some cool pictures with Lake Michigan and the sail boats in the back ground. I got my picture fix for a few hours. We walked down by the lake and got some gatorade and ice cream from another street vendor. Sat for a few minutes and the trotted back up to catch the bus back to the hotel.

So this excursion included walking 5 blocks to catch the bus, (after the 20 block walk to American Girl), a few miles to and from Soldier Stadium to explore, another mile to the Aquarium, several miles inside the Aquarium, a block or two down by the lake, and then about a mile back to the bus stop. Once we got off the bus, we walked about 5 blocks back to the hotel. See where I'm going here? My feet were ready to leave town. (but not me)