Tourist Day

Friday, June 12, 2009

This picture got missed in yesterdays post.

While Diana did a load of laundry at the marina I went (they picked me up) to Enterprise and got a rental car. When the laundry was done we headed into Chicago to play tourist. It was a beautiful day after yesterday, bright sun, temp near 70 except near the lake were an east breezy kept it closer to 60.

Diana had never been to the Shed Aquarium, I knew she would love it, so we drove to the new Soldier Field which is a very impressive structure and parked in the ramp under the stadium. Then we walked past the Field museum to the aquarium. We walked around looking at many of the exhibits, when we got down by the beluga whale and dolphin area they indicated there would be a show at 1:00.

We went to their very efficient restaurant had a couple of good sandwiches and looked out over both the inner and outer Chicago harbors. On a beautiful Friday afternoon there was too much boat traffic to describe.

About 12:45 went back to the arena area took seats, cast concrete with moderate agate, not something I could site on for a long presentation. At one the trainers brought in three dolphins and put them thru their paces. The dolphins were followed by a sea lion and then four beluga whales. It was an interesting performance.

We then went back to looking a displays, the section on sea horses also had some of their lesser known cousins the sea dragons. Diana was fascinated by these. As we got to the Caribbean Reef display they were just starting a presentation with a diver in the tank feeding the fish and rays, complete with microphone and a narrator outside. The underwater microphone allowed the diver to participate in the presentation as she feed the fish, again very interesting.

We finally decided we had had enough and headed back to the car, on the way Diana decided an ice cream cone would make her sore knee feel better. We drove back to the boat stopping just before we got here to grocery shop, just a few perishables.