To make this trip even cooler, we decided to ride the train instead of driving. Trains score major cool points. The downside is that the train to Chicago leaves at 5:45 a.m. and the train back from Chicago arrives at 11:50 p.m. So..... Saturday morning, I woke up at 3:45 a.m. so I could shower before we left the house at 4:30 a.m. Benjamin had gotten to sleep VERY late Friday night (excitement will do that!). We assumed he'd sleep on the train ride there. Um, no.
Our first stop was the Shedd Aquarium. We took a bus there and discovered the line was pretty long even right after getting there an hour after opening. It was in the 30s. We decided to wait it out, not knowing it would be 3 HOURS before we actually made it into the exhibit areas. During those 3 hours, the kids waited patiently for a while, but then hunger and boredom took over. We did get them each a hot dog from a snack stand nearby. Benjamin entertained the college-aged people behind us, dancing to music from a phone and making monster faces at them. At one point he and Jacob were chasing each other around Greg and Benjamin did a face plant into the concrete.
Once inside, I think Jacob could have spent weeks in there observing and learning. Benjamin had other ideas. Plus, it was so crowded (we later found it was a free day to Illinois residents... eek!). So, we wandered around for a bit and then decided to go get food.
Exhausted, we checked into our hotel. It was very nice, and the front desk person assured us the hotel restaurant was casual and suitable for small children. Luckily, we were there at 5 p.m., because it definitely didn't have a "small children" vibe. The food was very good, Benjamin was getting antsy and he has no problem with causing a scene in a public place, so we high-tailed it out of there without dessert.
Once settled in our hotel room, we spent some time enjoying the view. We spent a little time in the hotel pool, which was quite crowded, and then went back to our room and ordered dessert from room service.
The next morning, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast buffet. There were kids running around and everything was very casual, so that was much easier with Benjamin.
Bellies full, we went to the Willis Tower. Once there, they said it would be a 2.5 hour wait. We asked the kids if they still wanted to do it, and they did. A very nice co-worker gave me City Pass coupons leftover from her family's visit to Chicago, so we had two adult and 1 child pass to the Tower. We went to the regular line because we had to buy a ticket for Benjamin. An employee there saw our City Passes and said we could go to the express line. I said we still needed to buy a ticket for Benjamin. He asked how old he was, and even though it says only children 2 and under are free, he said to go on. This probably saved us two hours in line, and Benjamin was free! Woo hoo! It still ended up taking us about an hour to get up to the Sky Deck, but so much better than what we initially expected.
The downside to it was that they packed people into the elevators. We had to take 3 elevators to get up to the top and 3 down. It was so tight I couldn't pick Benjamin up with everything else I was carrying, and he thought he was going to be crushed (he wasn't, but it was definitely crowded). On one elevator, Jacob was close enough to put his arms around Benjamin. It was so adorable. I could see Benjamin visibly relax when he saw Jacob. On the way down, he had had enough and just started screaming. Luckily, I was able to pick him up then. He later told me (lower lip stuck out) that on the elevators he looked and looked but just couldn't find us and that we'd left him. I said we had been right next time him and tried explaining that he just couldn't see our faces, but he didn't believe me.
Afterwards, we had some time to kill, so we hopped on a bus again. At some point we realized we no longer had Benjamin's Thomas backpack with his monster hat, the trip home travel snacks, and their Willis Tower lollipops. Thank goodness Piggy was not in there. Jacob had been the one carrying the backpack, and he was devastated. Benjamin started wailing a sad, low cry. We decided to give finding it our best shot. We tracked down the bus we had been on, thinking we'd left it in the back. The bus driver was very nice and remembered us. She said she didn't think we'd had the backpack with us when we got on, but said we could go look. I went to the back of the bus and asked if anyone had a Thomas backpack under his or her seat. There was a collective, "Awwwww...." but no backpack. We then realized it had probably been left at the bus stop. We took a bus back to that spot and didn't see anything there. At that point, we decided it was probably gone for good. Benjamin kept asking, "Why did someone steal it?" I said maybe someone who didn't have food was able to get some food. He was still pretty sad and any time anyone looked at him, he would sadly say, "I lost my backpack."
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