Navy Pier - Grandkids Adventure - 2009

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Up at the crack, on the Chicago-bound Amtrak by 745am, heading for Navy Pier; Bonnie, Daryl and four grandkids-Alex Basting, Danielle Basting, Alayna Sepic & Joshie Sepic.

We arrived at Union Station and set out for Navy Pier, 2 1/2 miles away. The kids and Bonnie were awed by the hundreds of skyscrappers all around us, rubber-necking all the way - seeing the elevated trains, the river traffic, and people everywhere. About halfway we climbed in a taxi for the finish sprint to Navy Pier.

Our first event was a harbor boat ride featuring the skyline north and south of the Pier. Awesome. We picked up our package tickets for Cirque Shanghai, Ferris Wheel and (oops) a repeat ride on the harbor boat tour. The boat ride was awesome, despite the presence of a hundred young kids from Chicago playgrounds.

The Ferris Wheel is huge, but only 1/3 the size of the original one for the 1893 Columbian Expo (imagine that!). The wheel rotates once every 7 minutes, slow enough so that you board your gondolla while it moves. You get one rotation per ride. The other rides are a giant fast-moving chair swing, and a Merry-Go-Round. We did the chair swing, some twice.

The Cirque Shanghai was a great musical acrobatic show in a covered open air theatre with a cast of at least 30 performers. It was a great show!

Knowing how far the Union station was from Navy Pier we bought water taxi tickets to return to the station for our 8 o'clock ride back to Brew City. We suggested that we repeat the harbor boat tour, since we already had tickets from our package deal, however the kids reaction was a chorus of groans. We checked out a couple of other options but nothing worked out, the grandparents make an executive decision to return to the boat for a repeat tour in the harbor. The kids complied courteously, albetit with a little dragging of feet.

Before boarding the water taxi we hiked to the eastern end of the pier and examined the huge anchor of the World War II heavy cruiser USS Chicago and took some pictures. Then we headed for the water taxi and a cruise up the river to Union station and a rail raid back to Milwaukee, ending a fourteen hour day in the Windy City at Navy Pier.