Windy City Interactivity

On Tuesday the 11th, the Gibsons headed out hoping to visit the Shedd Aquarium and to go on a tour run by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, but faced with intermittent rain and long lines at the Shedd, they called an audible and ended up spending the entire day at the Adler Planetarium. I hadn’t included the Planetarium on my list of “29 Fun Things for the Gibsons to Do in Chicago” (I’ve never been there myself), but when we met up at the Days Inn that night for a dinner of take-out from Eatzi’s, they lobbied hard for its inclusion. After dinner, Peter accompanied me to Linens and Things where I bought a $29 microwave (our hand-me-down quit working over the weekend) and he marveled at the Palm Peeler and the Dryer Balls.

On Wednesday, we hooked up downtown after they’d seen Wicked at the Oriental Theatre (Peter liked it enough to buy the soundtrack) and we all walked over to my favorite Chicago destination: Millennium Park.

There are four things to love about Millennium Park: two of them are interactive sculptures: Cloud Gate by India’s Anish Kapoor (a.k.a. “The Bean”; see photo above on the left with Iona, Peter and their respective reflections) and the Crown Fountain by Catalunya’s Jaume Plensa(that's the south wall of the north fountain, squirting, on the right and the north wall of the South fountain, under Scottish surveillance at left) .

A third is Canadian Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion, where the Grant Park Orchestra was offering a free performance of Chabrier’s Danse slave, Saint-Saens’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (featuring Marc-Andre Hamelin), and Franck’s Symphony in D Minor.

And the fourth is the Park Grill hamburgers with Horkheimer cheddar cheese. Under foggy skies on Wednesday night, we indulged in all four—except Peter, who avoided the Horkheimer. And some enjoyed ice cream, too.