We Left the Kids at Home and Went to Chicago: Day 2 on the Lakefront Trail

When I showed Matt the above photo, I told him, "This is a startlingly attractive photo of you!" The windswept look works for him!

On our only full day in Chicago, the plan was simply to meander. Our (haunted!) hotel was perfectly located between Grant Park and Millennium Park, so after picking up coffee and breakfast, we ate in the North Garden-- 

I was trying to get a photo of a giant rat that skittered into that door (that leads to the Art Institute of Chicago!), but this beautiful column is also nice.

--then crossed the street to Millennium Park:

I missed taking pictures of my kids in front of cool stuff, so I kept standing Matt in front of cool stuff and taking his picture, instead. Although I am PISSED that that's the shirt he's wearing in all my photos...

I had extra incentive to remember to take photos of myself, because I was super invested in continually texting with the kids and it was fun to send them pictures of every place we went. Will mostly ignored me, because she finds social media a general affront to her being, but Syd, at least, indulged me by cooing over them.

It's pretty important to take every touristy photo possible.

Because I lack the important city skill of minding my business, I also shared photos with the kids of other random people living their best lives.

This was SUPER exciting, because Syd and I had just been scouting that exact same dinosaur hoodie a couple of days before! It was nice to see it on a real human out in the wild, because we could both agree that it did, indeed, look adorable. Syd flat-out refused my offer to accost the hoodie-wearing teen to see what size she was wearing, however. 

Syd also refused my offer to bring her to Chicago so she could take pointe shoe photos in cool spots, too. I wonder if I can find a large stone wall overlooking something picturesque here in town?

I've been in love with the BP Pedestrian Bridge since we first stumbled upon it during our first family visit to Chicago:

Walk over the BP Pedestrian Bridge, stroll through Maggie Daley Park, cross the terrifying S Lake Shore Dr., and there you are on Lake Michigan!

We walked south on the Lakefront Trail, then crossed the terrifying S. Lake Shore Dr. again to visit Buckingham Fountain, whose claim to fame, in my opinion, is that it's directly between our hotel and the lake, and so you can see them both from our window!

Our hotel is there just to my right!

Back to the Lakefront Trail:

Eventually we made it to the Museum Campus. I was dying to go into the Field Museum, but I swore to myself that I was going to try to do something besides spend all my time in museums on this trip, so instead I...

... just walked all the way around the Field Museum and took five billion photos...

Rice Native Gardens

Wedding pictures on the Great Ivy Lawn!!!

Edible Treasures Garden

I want to be a brachiosaurus replica when I grow up!

We continued down the lakefront, because I'd heard that the Skyline Walk around the Adler Planetarium is epic:

It is!

You might notice something is a little different here. Matt, weary of my constant bitching and moaning, has turned his godforsaken Thundercats T-shirt inside-out so that 1) I'll stop griping about it and 2) he can take a nice picture for a change.

Being us, we celebrated the best skyline view in the entire city by, umm... sitting on the concrete steps and reading in front of it for an hour:

I read so many great books on this trip!

At a good stopping point between chapters, we kept wandering--

--and we happened upon 12th Street Beach! We read here for another hour, as well as ate the most delicious street tacos I've ever had:

After tacos and a few more chapters, we walked back along the Lakefront Trail, then took a left. Just as it was starting to drizzle we happened upon the most fortunate of all sights:

A public library!

Obviously, we went in:

I think this is the only photo that I sent the kids that got a response from Will. Works for me, as I only took the picture to make her jealous!

Weirdly enough, I'm also reading a book about a haunted hotel!

Not gonna lie: we stayed in the library until it was about to close. Then we walked through the drizzle back to our haunted hotel, where we ate takeout, watched a marathon of Avengers movies that was inexplicably on cable, and read some more.

It was the perfect day!