September 17th 2009
Up early this morning to visit the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, the largest science museum in the Western hemisphere. We kicked off our visit with a tour of the Harry Potter exhibition featuring many of the props from the films. I even got to try the sorting hat on and got sorted into Ravenclaw (for the bright people!) I really enjoyed, the exhibition was really well laid out and staged with various ‘wizards’ popping up from time to time to guide you through and excerpts from the films showing amoung the props. A thoroughly enjoyable hour.
From there we headed onto some of the other exhibits including Networld which explained all about the internet and the Earth Revealed exhibit which featured a globe, dramatically suspended in the centre of the room and which illustrated various short information films about our planet.
After lunch we headed to the lower level where the German U-Boat U505 which was captured by the Americans during the Second World War is kept in a purpose built bunker beneath the museum’s lawn. Given to the museum in 1954, it was originally kept outside until 2004 when it was restored and installed in its present home in order to save it for posterity. This was the only German submarine successfully captured during the war (the Germans tended to sink them on abandoning ship to stop the allies getting their hands on the technology) and one of only 5 surviving U-boats in the world. We took a tour of the (tiny) ship which was home to 59 men for 3 months at a time. An excellent exhibit and tour - really worth the extra ticket cost.
Next we moved onto the Coalmine exhibit where you went down a mine shaft into a mine and took a look at the machinery and equipment used in Illinois mines. I found the information on this tour a little thin on the ground but since we’ve visited the Big Pit (which is a real mine) where the tours are conducted by former miners and highly informative, I think we’ve been spoilt. But when you think about it, we have the best coal in the world in Wales, so probably the best mines and miners too so it shouldn’t really have been a surprise.
We didn’t leave the museum until closing time (so we definately got our money’s worth!) so we stayed in town for a while longer to catch a free performance by the Joffrey Ballet in Millenium Park. Several thousand people had turned out for the performance all with their picnic blankets and food. We stayed for the first two acts, but the temperature had started to drop so we headed for home about an hour after the performance started.
We headed back to Greektown and since this is where we have been staying we thought it a good idea to go for a Greek meal. A block from our hostel there is a restaurant called Venus which serves Greek and Cypriot food, so where else could we go? They even serve Keo beer, but at over 5 bucks for a small bottle, Ed stuck with Bud! We shared stuffed vine leaves to start and then Ed had sheftalia and chips (what else) while I tried the Greek meatballs - all yummy :).