Day 3 Trip to Chicago

Today we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  Since we squeezed in two major museums yesterday it allowed time to add another visit on the trip to the zoo.  Originally, we saw the zoo in the travel planners online but did not know if we would have time to make it there.  But we did!

For breakfast we we to a local place called Do Rite Doughnuts.  Nice little place.  Very interesting flavor of doughnuts.  Worth checking out if you are around. They had candied bacon and other flavors. I was going to post pictures of the doughnuts but they seemed to disappear before I could. I highly recommend the raspberry jelly filled doughnut!

 

The kitchen of the doughnut shop. Getting ready to make tr raspberry filled. You can even see the jelly in that tall container.

 

Before we went to the zoo we did a little shopping.  My wife wanted to go Neman Marqus. The wall paper in the dressing room was like something from the 1970’s. After amlmost signing away our house and our cars for a shirt.  I kid you not! We went to a another store for overstocked clothes.  Still expensive! We also checked out some other stores but one problem we had was aperently no on in Chicago wears anything bigger than an XL.  Now I am in between XL and XXL depending on the style but I guess no one here eats meat and potatoes. Then we were off to the zoo!

One of the neatest things about the zoo is that it does not charge admission.  Now that’s not the only reason to go.   It does have many animals to see, but it does not have elephants.  But that should not be enough to keep you from the zoo.  They have a new exhibit opening in 2016 that will have polar bears and penguins.  We thought it was already open but it was not.  But they still had plenty to see.  It was just outside of the city, there was a great view of the city in the distance. There is a lot of walking involved so keep that in mind if you have kids or are not able to be as mobile.   

Big cat house.  Looks like an old train station.

Nap time! 

  
 
 The zebra.

 

There is a mother part of the zoo when you first come in that is a petting zoo.  That is fun if you have kids.  The whole zoo is great if you have kids.  But the petting zoo is modeled around a farm.  Lots of farm animals like cows and chickens and such.  There is a barn where you can watch cows being milked by machines.  

After we went to the zoo we went to Oz Park.  The main reason we went there was that it was on the way to dinner and it had Wizard of Oz statues.  Being from Kansas it baffled me that Chicago would be the home of anything Oz.  But it was.  It was a nice little park.  Not a real big park, but they did have softball parks there and tennis courts.  

The tin man.  
The scarecrow. 

 
Dorthy. 

 
The lion  

 
After going to the park, we went to a pizza place called Lou Malnati’s Pizzaria.  It was good and it was highly recommended by a local we meet at the Kansas City Union Station and front desk lady at our hotel. It was my wife’s first attempt at a deep dish pizza. After many reservations about trying deep dish, she actually liked it.  

We bought tickets to the Cubs vs. Brewers at Wrigley Field through StubHub.  The game started at 7:05Pm so we had pizza on the way.  Now my wife is not a big sports fan but I encouraged her to take in a ball game at Wrigley Fieldeeing how it’s Da Cubs.  Not to mention it’s historic value at Wrigley.  Da Cubs won 4-0. It was good game but not a lot of people were on base and things like that, so not a lot of stolen bases.

Wrigley field 

    
 

All together we walked about 14 miles. Which, unless you are a runner is a lot.  We ended up taking the train home since we were exhausted.  Which was fun since mass transit is limited in Kansas City.  My wife talked to a lady at the game about the best way to get back to our hotel and she was shocked we walked that far.

Lincoln Park Zoo: http://www.lpzoo.org

Oz Park: http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks/Oz-Park/

Do Right Doughnuts: http://doritedonuts.com

Lu Malnati’s: http://www.tastesofchicago.com/category/Lou_Malnatis_Pizza?utm_campaign=TOC%20-%20Lous&utm_source=Yahoo/Bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=lou%20malnati%20pizza