The first thing that Jo and I did after we had finished doing the Sears Tower thing was head to Millennium Park, which was about six blocks away. I guess each block is about 1/8th of a mile or something, so when we went to calculate our total walking for the whole day we came up with a pretty substantial number. The reason we even bothered was that with all that walking came a great deal of dehydration and fatigue. I believe Jo even got sick at one point because of all the walking and he was drinking a lot of water, but that does not really put everything back into your body.

The other thing that made this day a bit of a hassle getting around on foot was that it was quite hot and humid. Will said that this was the warmest he thinks it has been all summer, and he said that for the most part it has been in the 70’s. We got no such luck with high 80’s and 90 degree weather for the most part. Dark clouds rolled in and threatened rain, but we only got that rain right when we were leaving. I can not even tell you how much we sweat during the trip, but I know that there were two days I had to change shirts in the middle of the day.

We would have gone to see the “Married with Children fountain” in Grant Park, but Lollapalooza was in Chicago this weekend, so the entire park was fenced off. Come to think of it the city was generally more busy than it really would have been due to that event as well. I am sure that if we go again it will be a bit less crowded.

We went down to Millennium Park with a few sites already in mind. Jason already told us the main attractions of the park and so we knew what we were looking for. We started at this map for the entire park so that we could get our bearings and figure out what the closest site was that we were going to see. That is one of the cool things about going site seeing with Jo he really does not want to miss a single site. We ended up coming back to the maps after we had walked all around the park just to make sure we had not missed anything.

I am already going to go ahead and say that the coolest thing in the whole park to see is Cloud Gate, which is not what people actually call it. If you look at it you will realize why this huge reflective attraction is usually referred to as “the bean”. I am sure on nicer days, which is to say days with less overcast it is even more wonderful to see it. Maybe after they wipe it down as well, as people have a habit of putting their hands all over it. I can understand wanting to touch it, but the base was literally covered in hand prints. You can see so much of the sky and the Chicago skyline that I really couldn’t take my eyes off it.

There is a pavilion in the park, but that is for shows and we were not there on a day they had a performance. I saw brides and grooms in the park. I do not know where they were headed exactly, but I imagine they were either getting married in the park, or they had already gotten married and were downtown for pictures. Either way I do not know exactly what the plan was there.

I really could not find the energy to mingle with the kids and other people that were standing underneath Crown Fountain even though I really could have used the cool down. If you can not tell from the pictures the fountain is actually two large pillars of glass bricks and LED’s to display faces. The faces blink, and smile, and then eventually they close their eyes and open their mouth and water comes out. We did not hang out long enough to find out how long it takes between faces, but the face does change. When the faces are changing the water pours down from the top of the tower and soaks everyone on all four sides.

There were some other things to see in the park, but really it is all a bunch of stuff I did not understand. There were some things that were supposed to be art I suppose, and there was this sort of tunnel created where when you walked through you heard people talking about something through speakers, but I did not really care to hang out long enough to see what that was about either. Much like the Sears Tower I guess the final verdict is that if I were downtown already and had someone along with me that had never been there I would most certainly take them, but I personally do not have any real motivation to go back.

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