Mao is Watching

He is, I swear. On Sunday, I went down to Chicago for the day to hang out with Jason. There was, of course, little plan to what we would do while we were there. After arriving, we went down to the Taste of Chicago and wandered around, sampling a few items including some delicious sweet potato fries and an excellent Chicago-style hot dog. There is, however, only so much food that you can look at. Since the art museum was right there, we decided to go there. It's nice, but I still prefer the DIA (when it is completely open anyways). The portrait of Mao was great, especially when you turn around and see him down the hall. We did manage to avoid getting asked to leave the museum, mostly because Rose wouldn't let us try out the furniture in the "House of Tomorrow" and since I chose not to argue long with the guy who wouldn't let me take a picture of a statue of Marcus Aurelius.

We managed to see the entire museum in about two hours. What to do next? Be tourists. The Sears Tower is definitely one of the classic tourist traps. You show up and stand in line for an hour plus and don't find out that there is a $12 per person fee to go to the Sky Deck until you have been in line for 45 minutes. After you pay, you have to sit through an awful 8-minute Chicago propaganda film before riding the elevator up. The view is cool but it ended up getting hazy in the time that we were in line so we couldn't see as far as we might have.

The irony of the trip was that I spent as much time in transit to and from Chicago as I did there. I drove to Waukegan (about 1hr and 45min), waited for the train, then was on the train for another 1hr 40min before finally reaching Chicago and repeated the saga going home. I will say that the $5 unlimited train pass for the weekend definitely beats drving into the city and finding parking. Riding the train itself is a cultural experience. On the way down, I was definitely a member of the minority population and found out that Zion is a bad kid--his mom yelled at him for doing something dumb every couple of minutes and that little kids need to travel in kennels on the train so that they don't wander. On the way home I heard an awful rendition of "Barbie Girl" cellphone karoke several times from the high school girls on the second deck of the car I was in. I don't think people realize that the rest of the train can hear them when they are seated... It was still fun, despite the weird people.