Art and Da Cubs! - Chicago 7/16

Saturday's conference "menu" didn't really pertain to us so we took the opportunity to visit some of Chicago's sites. In the morning, we ventured through Millennium Park and watched a ton of people doing yoga. This led us to the Chicago Art Institute where we spent the next few hours looking at all sorts of things. Some of the most memorable were the Chicago Stock Exchange room and various paintings by Manet, Renoir, van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet. By far, the coolest thing we visited were the Thorn Rooms which are mini replicas of rooms from the 16th to 20th centuries. Any girl who dreamed of the "perfect" dollhouse as a child, would absolutely LOVE these rooms....and they're pretty neat from a guy's perspective, too. If you ever travel to Chicago, you must go see these!

Although we spent nearly 3 hours wandering around the museum, we missed a lot of the exhibits...including the American Gothic painting by Grant Wood which MeLissa didn't discover was in the museum until after they left - doh! So, we have yet another excuse to return to Chicago!.

After seeing what we could of the museum, it was time to hop the El Train and make our way to line anyhow because a friendly and helpful Chicagoan told us that the box office usually reopens a couple of minutes before the game to resell the players' tickets which won't be used for that game. Patience is a virtue and it definitely paid off when we got to the box office and were offered seats behind home plate in the shaded terrace area especially since the sun was in full force. Unfortunately, the Cubs lost to the Pirates that day, but we had a great time anyhow!

That night, we joined the other conference attendees for a banquet which featured a silent auction, dancing and lots of tasty food. The silent auction raised over $6000 to help discover new treatments for aniridia and to support the efforts of the USA Aniridia Network in educating the public about the condition. We enjoyed ourselves for a while and then returned to our room to begin the chore of packing for our trip home the next day!