Chicago Museums (Part 1)

Revitalized from The Bean (see post below), the crew set off to conquer the Magnificent Mile. Seeing as Erin and I are complete shopaholics (I mean that's what credit cards and your immature 20's are for right?), I thought that the mile might hold more allure, but in the end all the shops on the mile were a bit boring. They were all chains, and it seemed silly to go all the way to Chicago just to go shopping at H&M. The ones that we don't visit in DC (Gucci, Ralph Lauren, etc...) are all too expensive to be bothered with as well. Skipping over all the shopping left plenty of time for other exploring. That is when we stumbled upon this building with various rocks embedded in the wall.

See there's one from the White House removed from the inner wall during reconstruction in the 50's, and there's one Douglas Hall from the old University of Chicago. Then there's a piece of the Great Wall of China and one from the site of the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota.



After we spent a sufficient time checking out all the stones (there must have been hundreds!) we finally got motivated to figure out what this building actually was. Turns out it was a new museum called the Freedom Museum, which was free! So we went in to check it out. It was pretty small, but there was some interesting facts (all of which I have, of course, forgotten). Then at the end there is a section on the upcoming election. It was very interactive. You can take a video of what freedom means to you, and they'll save it for other people to view. Then they have this podium where you can give your acceptance/concession speeches. I have to admit I give a darn good speech! Erin's speech... eh... not bad, maybe just not appropriate either.






O well, like Julia said, Erin certainly was expressing her freedom, the salty mouthed pirate that she is!