5h4d0w’s Lair

Moved here

Moved here

Moved here

Too bad it’s now blocked by my company’s firewall… bah…
And that’s why I’m movin to blogspot.

Moved here

We woke up at around 8am this day.
We were thinking of asking our hostel owner if we can put our belongings for couple of days until we’re back from Canada.
But we realized that they’re not at the restaurant yet (the hostel reception is at the restaurant below it), and check out time is by noon…
So we had to time our next destination carefully and be back by noon.

So we decided that we should go to Shed Aquarium and Field Museum then back to hostel to check out. So off we go.
We make use our 2 day pass to the max, glad we bought it.
Shed Aquarium and Field Museum are in the same area as Adler Planetarium that we visited the other day, it’s called lakefront University Campus.
The aquarium is nice, but I really don’t know what to write here.
I’ve been to Monterey Bay Aquarium on the other coast of the states and also a couple of others regionally (I mean Asia).
They all basically looked similar, although there’s variation in terms of species on display.

Then we visited the Field Museum.
This museum actually have a collection of a LOT of things that covers objects illustrating art, archaeology, science and history.
Too bad we didn’t have much time (less than 2 hours to noon) so we gotta pick the exhibition that interest us the most.
Which is: Evolution
It’s pretty interesting, the exebition showed us evolution theory that said every living things derrived from a single cell organism.
It showed evidences of several mass extictions that forced organisms that day to evolve or extinct.

From there we rushed back to our hostel and checked out.
The hostel owner was very kind to have let us deposit our belongings in her office.
Next we went to have lunch at the nearby Subway and continued ourjourney to Sears Tower.
From this tower you can get a 360 degree view of Chicago which is pretty impressive from above.
It was a clear day and from the observation deck we can see lakefront University Campus that we visited earlier that morning.
We can also see John Hancock Tower further north and our hostel nearby.

There’s still plenty of time, but as kiasu Singaporean, we decided to just go to Greyhound station and wait for our departure time to Niagara Falls, ON, CA.
We found out that we’re not the only 2 kiasu people there.
Anyway, the station is pretty much rundown, and  there’s barely enough seats for people waiting.
Even the queue line wasn’t clearly defined. The station officers keep shouting to people to make 1 line per bus out of… 2 or 3 lines maybe…
And the bus was 1.5 hour late… and that’s just the beginning of our bad experience with Greyhound… bah…
We really think that Coach USA service is far better.

The bus drivers are a bunch of funny dudes though.
They are a bit synical, but in a funny way.
Anyway our next stop is Cleveland, OH. We have to transfer to a different bus.
The station here is no difference than the one in Chicago. We waited for couples of hour and the bus was also late.
We tried to sleep for the entire journey as the next day will be full of adventure.

-END of Day 9-
NB: Photos coming…

One BIG mistake happened today.
We overslept… due to the intense packing up the night before, we slept quite late.
And… My Nokia’s alarm has a functional problem -> once I edit the daily alarm, that day’s alarm by default will be skipped… BAH!

Anyway what happened is that we missed our 1st bus from Madison to Chicago (7am that is), so we gotta take the next bus which is at 8.30am and has longer travel time and instead of stopping at downtown Chicago, we gotta stop at O’Hare airport…
That roughly set us back around 3 hours in Chicago.

Anyway, so we spent the time lazing around behind Memorial Union eating ice cream

Bus departed at 8.30am sharp (we missed the earlier bus only by a mere 5 minutes).
We reached O’Hare at 11am and bought 2-Day passes (cost USD 9 each) for subway and buses.

Then we took subway from Airport to UIC-Halstead where our hostel is.
We checked in to The Parthenon Hostel, paid about USD 90 for a double room a night.

Then we proceed to Adler Planetarium.
This place was great, if only we had more time, Chicago has plenty of good museum to visit.

You can view Chicago’s beautiful night sky during the day in Addler’s Planetarium.
The planetarium also has an interesting architecture inside.
You can find many information regarding our solar system, galaxy and also the universe.
Outside the building you can find a miniature Stonehenge like structure, forgot what that was, will update if I finally found out.

We also bought Chicago City Pass, cost USD 59 per person.
Iit’s worth to buy this city pass if you’re going to visit the museums, it covers the entrance for Adler’s Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, Industrial Museum and John Hancock Tower/Sears Tower.
I bought this pass when I was in San Francisco too, and I think San Francisco City Pass is the best bargain coz it also includes transportation passes.
Too bad we only had half a day in NY, coz NY has it’s city pass as well.

From the planetarium we went to the nearby shore and enjoyed the sun and scenery.
The landscape is simply beautiful, lake shores are nice and it’s just feel amazing to see the cityscape meets the lake Michigan.

Then we explored Millennium Park, this park is interesting.
There’s this fountain which can show movie, and water can spray from the mouth of the person in the movie… difficult to imagine, just look at the pic.

Then there’s this sphere called "The Cloud Gate", but people called it "The Bean". It seriously looks like a bean!

We went further north and visited Victoria’s Secret.
Then we had dinner at John Hancock Tower.
It was very crowded that time coz a lot of people wanted to enjoy sunset from the restaurant above.

The meals and tips are not cheap, but it’s worth it.
The scenery was awesome and the sunset was beautiful.

Surprisingly, a LOT of big spiders hanging from outside the window (and that’s at 90 something floor).

Before we went back to hotel, we visited Hersey’s and decided that we should go back here at the end of our travel to shop for presents.

-END of Day 8-
NB: Photos coming…

We woke up at 7am this day, wifey going for her last day of conference while I getting ready to explore the rest of Madison.

At around 8am we went our separate ways.
My first destination this day is the Allen Centennial Gardens.

This garden is maintained by the University, it has quite some collection of nice flowers.
There’s also a small pond inside, but well I’m not into flower gardens so…

Next I went to check out a Laundromat that’s recommended to us by wife’s friend.
It’s quite a distance from the nearest busstop (free bus I mean, I suppose there are other non-free bus that stops nearby).
Then I went to see wife for her last day of conference and got a free lunch hehehe…
Wife
needs to go back to network around and I went back to the Laundromat to
exchange some quarters, but to my surprise, some sport club members are
washing clothes there… (like 10-15 people) doh… all the machines
were out of change… great!

So I went back to hotel and rested a while.
At 2pm Nina (wife’s ex-high schoolmate) came to bring us around.
So 4 of us went to… West Towne Mall again…

After shopping we went to attend a mass in the University’s vicinity.
It’s called St. Paul’s Catholic Centre.

Next we went to do our laundry, we gotta have a fresh supply of clothes for the next 1 week.

This time we went to State Street Laundromat instead.
Laundry took about 1.5 - 2 hours (wash and dry), in between we went to Memorial Union to catch the sunset and have our dinner.

After laundry we went back to hotel, pack our stuff, and go to bed.

-END of Day 7-

This day I finally caught the sunrise over lake Mendota.

I woke up at 5am, packed my stuff and went to somewhere near Picnic point entrance.
I quickly set up my video cam and took some sunrise shots with my digicam.

As I thought before, the sunrise was so beautiful over the lake, just look at these pics…
I also met with 3 families with their boats!
The 1st one with a dog, second with his son and the third is a whole family… nice…

The sun rises at around 5:20am and it’s over by 5:45am.
After that I quickly went back to hotel and continue my zzZZ..

Around 7am wife woke up and went to conference, while I woke up at 1pm… sigh what a waste of time…
But my camera’s with wife anyway so I can’t go somewhere nice to take shots.
I decided that this day should be my shopping day.
It’s time to round up the present list and went to malls for some serious shopping.

In all I went to 4 malls: Hilldale Mall, Westgate Mall, Towne Mall and Wallmart.

So other than the sunrise nothing much done this day…

-END of Day 6-

My alarm rang at around 5am, but alas.. I turned it off and continue to sleep.

Wife woke up at around 7:30am and went for conference.
Me? I woke up at around 9:30am.

My first destination today is the Geological Museum.
It’s located within University (actually it’s part of the University) premises.
Reached the museum at around 10am, it was drizzling that morning.

The museum is quite interesting, it basically has 2 categories:
Geology in terms of stones and minerals and geology in terms of dinosaurus.

Next in line was Henry Villa Zoo, reached there at 11am.
I must say that Singapore zoo is one of the best I’ve ever seen, but it lacks 1 thing: Free admission.
I’m not saying that it should be FOC everytime, I do understand that the animals need food too.
But some zoo in other parts of the world actually has a free admission day (such as San Francisco zoo which is free every 1st Wednesday of the month).

1 pretty good thing about Henry Villa zoo though, it’s free every day. And to my surprise, it’s not like what I had imagined a free zoo would look like.
In all, it’s a nice and budget family destination for all.

Just look at those bears (Polar, Grizzly and Black bears), the are lined up together in 1 section of the zoo.
And look at those cute Capybaras, they’re a close relative to my pets (they’re the biggest rodents on earth).

The other entrance of the zoo is right at lake Wingra’s shore.
I can see people swimming here and there’s a couple of lifeguards on duty as well.
I heard from the visitor center that this is another popular jogging site.
I was quite tempted to explore it, but it’s about 1pm that day so I decided to just go back to hotel first.

So I went north to lake Monona’s west shore and explore this side up to State street.
It’s amazing how this city is surrounded by so many greeneries and lakes.

I bought some coffee from State street and start heading back to hotel. Reached hotel at around 4pm and rest.

That evening I tried to catch the sunset, but the sky was cloudy so I just went to Memorial Union and had dinner with wife then went back to Hotel.

-END of Day 5-