Millenium-Park

September 18th 2009 Our last day in Chicago and we decided to take one of the free tours of Millenium Park, since we had already spent so much time there we thought it would be good to learn some more about it. Some of the highlights were ‘Cloud Gate’ or the ‘Bean’ as the locals refer to it which is the first outdoor public installation in the USA by the British artist, Anesh Kapoor. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city’s famous skyline and the clouds above. ...

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. ...

September 15th 2009 The hostel in Chicago is much bigger and much less friendly than our little home in Toronto, and doesn’t offer the cooking facilities we were hoping for, but it’s clean which is the main thing. It also provides free breakfast which although basic is enough to get you started. The Millenium Park in Chicago is an area dedicated to art, music, architecture and landscape design. There are free tours of the park available which we plan to take later in the week. They also hold free lunchtime concerts every day all through the summer until the end of September. ...

September 13th & 14th It was our last day in Toronto today. We needed to be at the bus station for about 5pm to catch our bus to Chicago, and had to vacate our room at the hostel by 11am, so we packed up our stuff and left it at the hostel and headed back down to the Music Garden by Lakeside. We had a couple of pleasant hours sat here reading books in the sun before heading back to the hostel to have a late lunch and grab our bags for the 20 minute walk to the bus station. ...