In an effort to cut costs we ended up at a park-and-ride in one of the worst parts of Chicago. Now you know it is bad when we are worried about our van getting stolen (see picture below). Thankfully the train ride was uneventful.
Relying on crappy Mapquest directions (really inconvenient time for our GPS to fail) we ended up costing ourselves an extra mile detour by starting off walking in the wrong direction. We were able to correct our mistake and got to see Wrigley Field before another several mile hike to the waterfront.
Starting with a lush city park the scenery changed as we walked along Lake Michigan and eventually morphed into a sandy beach with such beautifully colored water it was as close to the Florida Keys as we saw.
At Lincoln Park we spent hours exploring this completely free zoo located right off of the waterfront. Here we saw all kinds of things including a monkey holding her 3-day old baby, an aardvark and even a beaver and a duck sharing the same tank (though they were a little camera shy). A unique feature was how nonrestrictive their enclosures were and that the animals actually seemed pretty happy.
Right next door and also free the Conservatory in Chicago is the best we have seen and boasts 5 different rooms full of all kinds of exotic plants.
Exploring the rest of Chicago we came upon some incredible sites including a museum devoted to stained glass, the Chicago Bean, a Picasso statue, Frank Gehry architecture and saw a huge group of women dressed up as zombie brides.
And the icing on the cake? Our van was still there when we got back to the parking garage.
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