Spending some time in Chicago! WWFE's Chicago location offers big opportunities for site seeing

Dairy Foods, Oct, 2003 by David Phillips

If you can pencil in a few hours of free time, or add a day or two to your trip, there's plenty to sec in Chicago outside of Worldwide Food Expo.

How about bears, lions, and sharks?

The bears are the NFL variety, as for lions you have a couple of options, but sharks? Well, we're talking the real thing, not big-league spoils or business types.

The new Wild Reef exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium is the latest major expansion at a major city museum. Visitors can get up close and personal with more than 25 sharks.

Open to the public since spring, the exhibit features one of North America's largest, most diverse shark habitats.

Guests descend 25 feel underground to come face to face with sharks--only 5 inches of acrylic separates them from a 4000,000-gallon, 100-foot long habitat that is home to these menacing underwater creatures. Visitors catch a diver's-eye view of the mythic predators from Japanese wobbegongs, blacktip reef, sandbars and zebras to whitetip reef sharks.

"Sharks are the most efficient killers in the ocean," says Bert Vescolani, vice president of aquarium collections and education at Shedd Aquarium. "Although movies like 'Jaws' left an indelible mark on our cultural psyche, they did a disservice to sharks. The truth is these animals play an important role in helping maintain healthy reefs."

And if you like Wild Reef there's more to see at the Shedd, including dolphin and whale exhibits that incorporate a magnificent view of Lake Michigan.

Just across the museum campus is the newly renovated Soldier Field, home of the city's NFL franchise, the Bears. The "Monsters of the Midway" were carpetbaggers during the 2002 season while their historic home field was refurbished (or desecrated, depending upon which side of the civic argument you're aligned with), but now they're back home. The Bears play host to the Detroit Lions on Sunday Oct. 26. If you stick around after WWFE concludes, they will be at home again on Nov. 2, facing the San Diego Chargers. Both games kick off at noon.

Of course you can also see polar bears and African lions at the Lincoln Park Zoo. A short cab fide from downtown hotels, the zoo is one of the finest attractions in the city, and it's free.

Chicago offers some spectacular attractions, the kinds of gems every regular visitor should see and experience at least once. For instance, a visit to the sky deck of either the John Hancock Building or the Sears Tower offers incredible vistas, and the bragging rights of having been in one of the world's tallest buildings. On the first day of a cold front, visibility can extend more than 20 miles. Both buildings have made recent improvements to their sky deck attractions.

Navy Pier has become the most visited and most visible attraction in Chicago. A major renovation completed just before the 1999 Worldwide Food Expo turned what was once nearly a while elephant into a bustling, multi-use destination place that retains at least some of its historic character. You can see a movie, have dinner or a drink, rent a bicycle, take a boat ride, or, if the weather permits, a breathtaking ride on the Ferris wheel.

Shopping

For many, a visit to Chicago wouldn't be complete without a shopping spree.

Shopping in Chicago began on State Street with the opening of the original Marshall Field's Department store in 1852. Today, shoppers at Field's flagship store will find an outstanding selection of men's and women's apparel, an extensive housewares department, several fine restaurants, a food court and a visitor center. State Street is also home to another famous Chicago department store, Carson Pirie Scott, where customers are drawn into the entrance of the store by the ornate ironwork designed by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan in 1899.

A bit further north there's more shopping at the famed "Magnificent Mile," which runs along Michigan Avenue from Oak Street to the Chicago River. Amidst department store giants, Marshall Field's, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's, are hundreds of specialty shops and boutiques offering goods from around the world. Oak Street, just west of Michigan Avenue, is a boutique shopper's dream with such stores as Ultimo, Gianni Versace and Giorgio Armani.

An abundance of shopping can also be found at Water Tower Place, the 900 North Michigan Avenue Shops, Chicago Place Shopping Center, Navy Pier, dozens of Chicago neighborhoods and "The Shops at the Mart" located at Chicago's Merchandise Mart.

Museums Galore

In the Wild Reef, the Shedd may have the flashiest new museum Exhibit in town, but there are plenty of other wonderful museums to choose from--about 50 of them according to the list kept by the city's convention and tourism bureau. About half of them have something to do with art, a half-dozen are related to architecture, and perhaps the most unusual is a collection of surgical instruments.

At the Art Institute you'll find more lions. Two sculptured beasts adorn the steps of the building, which is on the east side of Michigan Avenue in Grant Park. Inside, in October, you'll find two special exhibits--Paul: Paul Gauguin and the South Pacific: The Edward McCormick Blair Collection: and Manet and the Sea: Voyage to Impressionism. The Art Institute is also permanent home to many great works from throughout history. The Gauguin exhibit opened just last month to rave reviews.