Christmastime in Chicago

We took a short trip to Chicago last week and spent three days there. I really wanted to soak in the Christmas spirit just by walking down the streets. It felt nice strolling along Michigan Avenue in the light snow. The Christmas lights were a little more low key than those in SG, and they don't dress up their buildings as much. But we still enjoyed the lights and the atmosphere.

This is a real, living Christmas tree at the John Hancock Tower! The biggest living Christmas tree I have seen so far. Wonder if I will ever see the one at Rockefeller, which I bet is much bigger.

SS was thrilled to see the toy trains chugging along the winding tracks. Hopefully one day we will be able to set up our own! I thought it was fun to see so many trains moving all over the place without hitting one another. This kept us entertained for one hour while we waited to eat at the Cheesecake Factory.

Day 2: We spent the day at the Museum of Science and Industry. It is something like our Science Center, with the Omnimax theatre, but with additional cool stuff like a real U-505 submarine which was used by the Germans in WWII and captured by the Americans.

We went for the tour inside the submarine, where the guide gave us a peek into how it was like to live inside the submarine, and an exciting account of how the capture took place. The thing I remembered most was that there were only two toilets in the whole submarine, one of which had to be used for food storage at the beginning of the voyage. So the crew literally had to eat their way through in order to access the second toilet.

I was really impressed with these Chicago buildings made from Lego bricks. They look exactly like the real ones! The left-most one is the Chicago Spire, which is still not built yet, but when it is completed, I will love to come back and see it.

From left: Chicago Spire and Marina City, John Hancock Tower and the Trump Tower.

One of the main reasons for our visit: The "Christmas Around the World and Holiday of Lights" in the museum features this huge tree, plus 50 other trees each decorated by different ethnic communities! We saw the Chinese one (lots of "double happiness" character cut-outs and erm, CNY lanterns made from ang paos) and the Japanese one (origami!). The European ones had a lot of intricate ornaments, some of which looked handmade. I wished we had more time to go through them one by one.

Another train track! This one is humongous! What you see here is only half of the display. Some of the toy trains which were running were as long as two meters! The programming was done with a lot of detail, coz some of the trains will give way to others when they have to utilize the same track.

A very realistic model of Chicago's architecture and the trains running through them. You can see how 333 West Wacker Drive (my fave building) looks just like the real thing in a photo in my previous post.

After the museum visit, we went to catch James Cameron's Avatar in 3D in the IMAX at Navy Pier. The theater was packed! If there is one movie you want to catch in 3D, this is it!