Chicago, Wednesdays Wonders!

Our Wednesday started with a bus to the museum campus, bringing us in past Soldier Field stadium, a really impressive sight.

We were off to the famous Field Museum of natural history, a big draw and a beautiful classical style building.

It very much reminded me of the Natural History Museum in London, with a similarly impressive grand hall.

The star of this area is undoubtedly 'Sue' the T-Rex, the largest and most complete dinosaur skeleton in the world.

In fact her actual skull weighs so much it's too heavy for the rest of the skeleton! So it is displayed in a seperate case upstairs and a lighter duplicate is on the full skeleton.

We then headed into the exhibit hall of stuffed mammals, some of them were extremely realistic!

These are the infamous 'Lions of Tsavo', two male man-eating lions who killed and ate 140 railworkers around 1900 in Tsavo. Friends had lent us the movie of this true story 'The Ghost in the Darkness' before we visited. We were both surprised at the size of these lions, considering the havoc they wreaked, we expected them to be larger I think.

The view of the main hall from above is impressive and we enjoyed our visit here. However we were a bit tired and there were a few too many noisy children running around, so we moved on!

We escaped to the relative quiet and calm of the Adler Planetarium, as I have never been in a Planetarium before.

We enjoyed the fascinating displays and then caught two of the shows, 'The Night Sky' which really was very interesting, but the dark and warmth made us both nod off for a few minutes quiet kip! We did manage to stay awake through the more action packed 'Cosmic Collisions' though!

The Adler Planetarium has been voted by Chicago residents as having the best skyline view and we concur with their opinion.

After another bus ride back to the hotel, we headed out to a Giordano's, of Chicago Pizza Pie fame.

It was delicious, but extremely filling and we had enough leftover for dinner on Thursday night too!

We decided to walk off dinner with a bit of geocaching and en route we passed the Trump Tower.

We had a quick gander inside this very impressive new skyscraper, it's quite something close up.

Then we followed our GPS directions through a riverside walk with lovely views.

Down the side of the famous Wrigley Building, which has some really beautiful architectural features.

Before arriving at our final destination, another famous Chicago landmark. This was a 'virtual' cache, where you just have to find it and then log a photo of you at it holding your GPS. This was our second find of the night, we finished the trip with five in total.

The we walked back down the Magnificent Mile to the Hancock Tower and ascended once again to see the city lit up at night.

We also had an ulterior motive, to see the Navy Pier fireworks.

After our visit the previous day and wanting to avoid the huge crush on the actual pier, we decided this would be a superb vantage point and we were right.

We were not the only people to think of it, but it never got really crowded and we easily got front row seats for the show.

It was a great decision, we had a drink in the cafe, then had a birds eye view of the wonderful weekly display. It was just a really special highlight of our holiday.

After the show we did a circuit of the tower again to capture the night views. This was looking down on the beach and shoreline.

Looking across the city away from the lake, it was easy to see the block layout.

And finally looking down the Magnificent Mile and across all the skyscrapers, what a view to end our day!

Tomorrow join me to see a highlight of the Hubsters holiday, Wrigley Field home of the Chicago Cubs, a bit like Old Trafford/Anfield if you're a Brit!. Followed by the Art Institute and some of the wonders of the art world, like Monets and Van Goghs close-up.

And in case you are wondering, yes we walked miles everyday and were a little foot weary everynight!