The highlight of the new park is the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by architect, Frank Gehry. It's claimed to be the most sophisticated outdoor concert area in the US and it's not difficult to see why. It covers a msasive area and, as you can see from the photo below,the arches have speaker systems built within them to counteract that slight delay you get from being a distance from the stage. A possible venue for Three Blind Mice? Who knows!
The Field Museum is home to the most complete set of fossilsed bones of a T. Rex, that goes by the name of Sue. The paliantologists are unsure of the sex of the beast but "she" was named after Sue Hendrickson, the scientist who discovered the remains. There's also a working lab where paleontologists work with newly discovered fossils, cleaning them up and removing the material around them. With the lab surrounded by glass so that the public can see the scientists at work I wonder if they don't feel like musuem exhibits themselves!
Further in the musuem is a display of various wildlife, consisting of stuffed animals set in poses and scenes of what would be their natural habitat.There are exhibits ranging from the great bears of Alaska to zebras from Africa.
Part of me thinks it's a great shame that these animals have been killed just to become museum exhibits. However I guess in the days when these exhibits were created, before mass media and the Internet, this would have been the only way that many people would have seen many of these creatures "close up". Thankfully times have changed.
Next stop was the Shedd Aquarium, whose emphasis is on conservation. The last time I was in Chicago in 2000, there was three Baluga Whales, in fact one had recently been born there. The aquarium now boasts five. They are very vocal animals, so much so they have been called the canaries of the sea. They might even be called parrots as they have started to mimic the sounds they hear around them, from the recorded bird calls in their area to the breathing of the scuba divers that swim with them.
The aquarium boasts an elder statesman in an Australian lungfish. No one at the aquaurium knows its exact age but it has been at the museum since 1933! This makes it one of the oldest living fish ever.
By the time I'd done the tours it was getting closing time so it was time to head back to the hotel. Now the plan was to put my feet up for an hour and then head off to see some music. After all this was one of my reasons to visit Chicago (and of course to see my buddy, Lillie!). Murphy's Law raised it head and found my self waking up at about 2am the next morning .DOH!!
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