Chicago – Wednesday, Lincoln Park Zoo, ER, & Boat Ride

Wednesday morning I took the kids to Lincoln Park Zoo which was just over a mile from our house.  I LOVE being able to walk everywhere.  We walked down Clark street which has a lot of nice restaurants and shops, it’s kind of like South Congress in Austin.  The architecture is so neat here.  The building below is a 7-11.

We also passed this building which is a storage facility built in 1921 and covered in  accurate Egyptian imagery and hieroglyphics.

Then we arrived at the zoo, which is absolutely the prettiest zoo I have ever been to, and it’s FREE.

The landscaping and gardens just took my breath away.  After the long hot walk it was like an oasis.

The kids and I opted to just explore without a real plan.  It was really hot, and I had the stroller, so I didn’t take that many pictures.  They wanted me to list the animals we saw: tigers, lions, flamingos, seals, otters, giraffes, rhinos, polar bear, African dogs, puma, red panda.

This lady was playing guitar and had a lot of instruments kids could play with, she and Anabel sang “This Land is Your Land”.  This is the sort of magic moments that happen when you travel that you could never plan or expect.

Even the water fountains were fancy!

Next we went into the reptile house and saw bats, snakes, and spiders. William walked over to join us for lunch and we were walking across a bridge to the café when…”Mom! Dad! A bug flew into my ear!”  Uh oh. The zoo nurse wasn’t comfortable trying to get it out so we caught a cab and went to the hospital ER. They put in oil to kill the bug and flushed out his ear.  They never could find it, so maybe it flew out again?! Ack.

Bella was getting very hungry and restless so Will took her home and I stayed with Jacob at the ER until we were discharged. Then Jacob and I walked to McDonalds and had lunch and ice cream, it was about 3 PM by this time.   We walked home and I took a long nap!

That evening we were back on the subway to head to Navy Pier.  Now a lot of people love Navy Pier.  It is like a midway boardwalk with music and street food and tons of people.  I expected to like it, but it turned out that it wasn’t my cup of tea after all, it was very very hot and crowded and expensive and LOUD.  We did stay long enough to ride the ferris wheel and have hot dogs.

We took a taxi over to the river where we took a cruise on a boat down the river and out onto Lake Michigan. Out on the water it was windy and finally we were able to cool off. The views of the city lit up were amazing. Then there was a fireworks show.

My night skyline pictures did not come out. Boo.

The cruise didn’t return until 10:45; Will’s Dad set up a limo to take us back so we wouldn’t be on the subway so late at night. The kids LOVED it!