During our unexpected stay in Chicago, we wound up staying at the Grant Park Best Western. This turned out to be very good for our purposes. We were a block off the bus route with the direct line to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, which was where we spent our extra day in town. We were just a few blocks from where we met friends for dinner, so when we took the bus from the museum to the restaurant, we only had to walk a block, then, because it was so close, we walked the seven blocks or so back to the hotel. Grant Park was across the street. I immediately noticed an interesting sculpture garden across the street:

I think it looks kind of like a modified herd of elephants or maybe the bottom half of people gathered together and milling around.

The Chicago Skyline:

I haven’t been to the Museum of Science and Industry for many years, and it has changed completely since my last visit there. They have a simply amazing Seattle to Chicago model train exhibit:

We took the Wow! Tour (behind the scenes at the museum), where they showed us the working landing gear for the 727 suspended from the ceiling. I didn’t get any pictures, but it was…Wow. You can see the plane hanging above the Chicago model railroad skyline.

The highlight of the tour was the German U-Boat the United States captured near the end of World War II. They’ve developed a remarkable display area for it, and we took a tour. It has its own post, so look for it on U Day.

Thank you for visiting for the April A-Z Blogging Challenge. Today’s entry is “Grand Tour”-themed, about our Amtrak trip we took last month. I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions in comments. If you don’t want to miss an entry, please enter your email address below, press sign-up, then check your inbox to click the validation link to get these blog posts in your inbox.