CHICAGO!

William against the Chicago skyline

♪Start the car, I know a whoopee spot

Where the gin is cold, but the piano's hot

It's just a noisy hall where there's a nightly brawl

And all...that...jazz♪ 

What I'm trying to say with that probably inappropriate opening is we're in Chicago! The city, not the musical. We arrived yesterday, shortly before sundown. We reserved an Air BnB in a nice quiet neighborhood, an old fashioned 'walk up'. We have a flat for two nights. On arriving we trotted right back out to a nice dinner at The Handlebar, a  cute restaurant only a block from our flat.

But I'll back up a little. By coincidence (really, it was coincidence - of a sort) our first stop on arriving was the Chicago Field Museum. I wanted to go in, at least for a quick look. I adore natural history museums.

William stayed in the car and I jumped out for quick look in the Musuem

The tantalizing entrance to the museum - dead ahead!

I got a quick peek at the massive main hall but the museum was closed to the public in readying for a special event, a nighttime gala.

My speedy peek

The museum was closed for the evening, but seeing how forlorn that made me, the following day, William indulged me. We spent the day at the museum. Yet another item of my bucket list fulfilled!

William syncs with his new, powerful Spirit Animal

We toured the Egyptian exhibits

We had breakfast in the Museum's cafe, and there we noticed a few dino souvenirs - mugs, beer, etc.,  that started me telling William about the infamous T-Rex, Sue. A museum docent heard me and said, "Sue? Sue's here, just over there. I looked up and HOLY CRAP, - SUE!

Seeing the massive T-Rex Sue, right there in front of me was dumbfounding. I never had a bucket list wish to see Sue as I didn't even know it was possible that to see her! Yet, there she was, in all her magnificent massive bony-ness - the best preserved & most complete T-rex on earth.

SUE the T-Rex

The Field Museum was on my bucket as it is the final resting place of the man-eating Lions of the Tsavo.  I finally got to go eye to amber scary eye with the pair of murderous brothers. *shivers!*

The Ghost and the Darkness

The man-eating lions in the movie were played by a pair of acting lions called, 'Bongo and Caeser'. Bongo & Ceasar? Not as mysterious or awe inspiring name the real killer lions were called by the people they preyed upon and that was the name of the movie about the killers: 'The Ghost and the Darkness'. Sort of gives one the shivers, doesn't it?

Nice kitty, murderous kitty...

The Man-eaters were maneless but they can grow manes - it entirely depends on the temperatures where they live. I'm not lion, that's a-mane-zing!

The museum has .002 percent of it's b'zillion objects de interest on display and we saw perhaps .001% of those.

Ancient Chinese textiles

Chinese Masks & Puppets

and in artful forms such as these carved frogs made of African Anyolite

 I love looking at clothing from Aboriginals of all nations - so pretty...

Oh, and the shoes

Whew! There were some long corridors to trek

There was an honest-to-gosh live Bigfoot in the Redwoods exhibit

You KNOW we had to hit the gift shop, though I didn't do much $$ damage.

There were several BIG WAYS to empty one's coffers there...

I regret passing over the T-Rex & Wild Cat Eyeball pops...

I am indulging in some back handed bragging when I say we so enjoyed ourselves, and were so reluctant to leave, that we ended up being gently escorted to the exit by a friendly museum guard. If we could have slipped the guard for a full night in a museum, we may well have done so - except...there are further plans for our last night in Chicago.