Overcast
I got up at 7.50 and had breakfast downstairs as the previous day except with the eggs scrambled. The weather was somewhat overcast although as yet without sign of the forecast rain, though I had decided to spend some time at some of the city's indoor attractions. I decided to head towards the Planetarium, and made my way first to Grant Park, across Michigan Avenue and the tracks of the Metra commuter lines.
I stopped to look at the Buckingham Fountain, donated to the city in 1927 by a wealthy widow in memory of her brother. It is modelled on the Bassin de Latone at Versailles but in typical American fashion on a larger scale. I continued across Lakeshore Drive to the waterfront, and walked some distance south until the shoreline turned east around the Shedd Aquarium and onto an artificial promontory leading to the Planetarium.
My two-year-old guidebook claimed that the entrance fee was a reasonable $5, but on arrival it turned out that the cost was in fact either $13 or $18 depending on how much I saw. I took a quick look in a leaflet on the attractions, and at the large numbers of school buses accumulated outside, and decided not to bother.
Instead I chose to go the Aquarium, housed in a large, originally octagonal but much-extended, building dating from the 1920s, topped with a dome and Neptune's trident. The aquarium was at $21 even more expensive than the Planetarium but proved to be well worth it. My ticket included timed entry to the new Wild Reef attraction on a lower level, and it was to this I headed first. The aim was to recreate the ecosystems found in tropical coral reefs around the world, with much weird and wonderful wildlife. Brightly coloured fish, crustaceans, sharks, stingrays and much more were on view.
Up in the original octagon, a section of building was devoted to the Amazonian system through various seasons of the year, including several species of fish I recognised from the days when I kept an aquarium at home. Another wing contained a series of tanks featuring fish from the lakes and rivers of Illinois. Various other exhibits contained creatures from all over the world, and the centre of the building was dominated by a 75,000 gallon reef with some of the larger reef wildlife.
By this time I was feeling somewhat hungry, but noticed from the floor-plan that the place had penguins. I could not resist having a quick look first. An exhibit had been set up to mimic the environment of the Falkland islands, with elegant gentoo penguins and the smaller tufted rockhopper penguins peacefully co-existing by virtue of ignoring those penguins not of their species.
Fortified by a burger in the aquarium's food court (there seemed to be little sign of fish on the menu), I went into the oceanarium. This was dominated by two vast interconnected tanks, one containing dolphins, the other beluga whales. The latter are among the smallest members of the whale family, white creatures from the high Arctic with strangely humped heads and a seemingly human ``smile''. Those here had been taken from a thriving population in Hudson Bay or else bred in captivity. Smaller tanks contained harbour seals and sea otters.
I returned downstairs to hear an informative talk on the penguins. In creating the Falkland environment, care had been taken to keep the variations in day lengths (by use of artificial lighting) and in temperatures in keeping with the islands' latitude, thus preserving the natural reproductive cycle. The only difference was a six-month displacement for the northern hemisphere in order to make it easier to exchange birds with other zoos; consequently it was currently nesting season.
Also downstairs was a viewing gallery allowing one to see the dolphins underwater, some of them indulging in the seemingly bizarre habit of swimming upside-down. I returned upstairs to the giant indoor arena overlooking the dolphin pool in order to see another presentation.
This began with an awful and inaudible warm-up woman asking questions about dolphins of some seemingly none-too-bright children, but the main display was very impressive, if somewhat dubious ethically. A group of staff entered the water and waded out to various submerged or semi-submerged islands, and then the dolphins put on a brief but spectacular display.
A member of staff then explained that the animals were going to be nothing which they did not do naturally in the wild, though they had been trained to do them in response to signals from their trainers. There followed a demonstration of the training process (in which the dolphins were rewarded with fish). After a brief interlude in which the dolphins were led aside for the belugas to put in an appearance, the dolphins returned for their grand finale, with lots of spectacular leaps out of the water. I took some photographs with my film camera on full zoom and hoped for the best.
I left the oceanarium into an area devoted largely to seahorses and seadragons, then took a brief look in the obligatory shop before leaving at 4.45. By now, cloud was low over the city, hiding the upper half of the Sears Tower from view. Views from the skydeck would have been somewhat unimpressive. I decided to take a little excursion on the El, and took the Green line to Clinton, northwest of the Loop on the west bank of the Chicago River. A short walk took me under a series of railway tracks and across the river to the enormous Merchandise Mart, a vast limestone building from the 1930s containing a huge retail complex. I took a look around inside and spent a little time in a bookshop, then went to the adjoining El station to do a tour of the Loop.
I got off at Quincy station, by far the best-preserved station and carefully restored to look much as it did in the 1890s, save for the electronic signage. I then returned to the hotel via the El to Library, then transferred to the Metro. A woman in the station was playing an Oriental-style fiddle accompanied by a tape of Hungarian-sounding music -- a bizarre but not altogether ineffective combination.
After a rest at the hotel I went out in the evening to look for restaurants in the Near North area, a little to the west of the Magnificent Mile. I chose an Italian place named Maggiano's and had a very filling meal of Chicken Marsala and pasta, then returned to the hotel. I spent a little while persuading my laptop to import the day's digital camera photographs and retired to bed around 11.30.