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Chicago, Illinois MUST DO's www.TrustedTours.com |
Museums and Monuments
1.) The Field Museum of Natural History, sits on Lake Shore Drive next to
Lake Michigan, and is part of a scenic complex known as Museum Campus Chicago.
The Museum is organized into four major departments: Anthropology, Zoology,
Botany and Geology. Visitors will be able to see Sue, the largest and most
complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil skeleton currently known, a comprehensive set
of human cultural anthropology exhibits, including artifacts from ancient Egypt,
the Pacific Northwest and Tibet and a large and diverse taxidermy collection,
featuring many large animals, including two prized African elephants and the
infamous Lions of Tsavo, featured in the 1996 movie "The Ghost and the
Darkness".
2.)
The Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum in Chicago, was the
first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere and is the oldest in existence
today. The Adler was founded and built in 1930 by the philanthropist Max Adler,
with the assistance of the first director of the planetarium, Philip Fox. It is
located amongst many other world famous museums on the shores of Lake Michigan
in Chicago's Museum Campus.
3.) The John G. Shedd Aquarium was at one time the largest indoor
aquarium in the world with 5 million gallons of water and 20,000 fish; it has
since been eclipsed by the 8 million gallon Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. The
aquarium is surrounded by Museum Campus Chicago, which it shares with Adler
Planetarium and the Field Museum of Natural History. The aquarium gets 2 million
annual visits. It contains 8,000 animals of 650 species including fish, marine
mammals, birds, snakes, amphibians and insects.
4.) The Museum of Science and Industry is located in Chicago, Illinois in
Jackson Park, in the Hyde Park neighborhood. It is housed in the only in-place
surviving building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the former Fine
Arts Building. The Museum has several major permanent exhibits. Take Flight
recreates a San Francisco to Chicago flight using a real Boeing 727 jet plane.
The Coal Mine re-creates a working mine inside the museum. The museum has just
opened a new exhibit space for the U-505 Submarine, the only German submarine
captured by the US in World War II. Silent film actress Colleen Moore's Fairy
Castle is on display, as is The Great Train Story, a 3,500 square foot model
railroad that explains the story of transportation from Seattle to Chicago.
Observatories and Skyscrapers
1.) The John Hancock Center and Observatory at 875 N. Michigan Ave. is a
one-hundred-story, 1,127 ft. tall skyscraper designed by structural engineer
Fazlur Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and, when completed in 1969, was the
tallest building in the world outside New York City. It is the third-tallest
skyscraper in Chicago and the fourth-tallest in the United States, after the
Sears Tower, the Empire State Building and the Aon Center.
2.)
The Sears Tower is the tallest building in the United States.
Construction commenced in August 1970 and the building reached its originally
anticipated maximum height on May 3, 1973. When completed, the Sears Tower had
overtaken the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City as the
world's tallest building. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard
methods, though the building owners count the main roof as 109 and the
mechanical penthouse roof as 110. The distance to the roof is 1,450 feet, 7
inches, measured from the east entrance.
Parks and Zoos
1.) Originally built in 1916, the Navy Pier has long been one of
Chicago�s most popular attractions. Once utilized as a shipping terminal and
then a training area for the Navy during World War II, the Navy Pier was rebuilt
in the 1990s. The pier's current layout includes fast-food kiosks, shops, a
ballroom, a concert stage, and convention exhibition halls. Centerpiece
attractions include a 150-foot-tall Ferris wheel, an IMAX theater, the Chicago
Shakespeare Theater, the Chicago Children's Museum, and the Smith Museum of
Stained Glass Windows. The pier now features a large front lawn showcasing
numerous larger-than-life public art sculptures and an interactive dancing
fountain. It continues to be used as an embarkation point for tour and excursion
boats. One of its most popular yearly attraction is the tall ship of the
Venetian Night festival. The pier and its grounds encompass more than 50 acres
of parks, gardens, shops, restaurants and other entertainment
2.) Lincoln Park is a 1,200 acre park along Chicago�s lakefront facing
Lake Michigan. It is Chicago's largest public park. It has many recreational
facilities including 15 baseball areas, 6 basketball courts, 2 softball courts,
35 tennis courts, 163 volleyball courts, field houses, a golf course, and a
popular fitness center. It includes a number of harbors with boating facilities,
as well as public beaches. There are landscaped gardens, a zoo, the Lincoln Park
Conservatory, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, and a theater on the lake with
regular outdoor performances during the summer.
3.) The Brookfield Zoo
is a zoo located in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield. The zoo covers an area of
200 acres and houses over 400 species of animals.Brookfield Zoo opened on July
1, 1934 and quickly gained international recognition for using moats and
ditches, instead of cages, to separate animals from visitors. The zoo was also
the first in America to exhibit giant pandas, one of which (Su-Lin) has been
taxidermied and put on display in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. In
1960, Brookfield Zoo built the nation's first fully-indoor dolphin exhibit, and
in the 1980s the zoo introduced Tropic World, the first fully-indoor rain forest
simulation
Trust us, we've been there!
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