October 24, 2005
Hello from Chicago - The Field Museum and
Pompeii - "Stories from an Eruption"
Yesterday I got up early again and typed up my
travel reports on the free computer at the Arlington House.
Then my friend Linda and I made our way to one of our favourite
Chicago hangouts for breakfast: the "Bourgeois Pig Cafe"
is located close to the intersection of Fullerton and Halsted/Lincoln
and is a 2 story cozy cafe with a small sitting area and patio downstairs,
and a beautiful converted living room and balcony upstairs. I had
one of my favourite breakfast indulgences: a deluxe Belgian waffle
with strawberries, whipped cream, pecans and brown sugar, just a
sinful treat on a hungry stomach. Linda had a huge and delicious
looking foccaccia sandwich with ham and melted cheese and raved
about it as well.
The Bourgeois Pig Cafe
Appropriately strengthened we started our explorations. We wanted
to check out a Polish area called Wickertown and took the Fullerton
bus west to Damen and south to North Street. We walked around a
pleasant neighbourhood with lots of small stores, funky boutiques
and chic little restaurants. The weather was really clammy and cold
though, so we decided to continue our explorations indoors and head
to a museum. On we hopped onto the el-train and headed downtown
to the Chicago Cultural Center,
the main informational contact point for tourists. One of the local
volunteers recommended that we go to the Field Museum and see the
Pompeii exhibit.
The Field Museum was originally incorporated in 1893 and was renamed
the Field Museum of Natural History, to honour the Museum's first
benefactor, Marshall Field. In 1921 the Museum moved from its original
location in Jackson Park to its present site on Chicago Park District
property near downtown where it is part of a lakefront Museum Campus
that includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium.
These three institutions are regarded as among the finest of their
kind in the world and together attract more visits annually than
any comparable site in Chicago.
Entrance to the Field Museum
The Field
Museum is currently hosting a special exhibition: "Pompeii
- Stories from an Eruption" and we decided to visit this special
exhibition. The Pompeii exhibit features jewellery, earthenware,
small tools, everyday objects, even a bathtub that were excavated
from Herculaneum and Pompeii. Room-size frescoes and mosaics bring
to life the artistic talent of these ancient Roman towns. A little
eerie were the plaster casts of victims that had been buried in
volcanic ash and when the bodies disintegrated, they left behind
a cavity in the ash that was filled with plaster, providing a perfect
cast of the victim. We saw plaster casts of a young girl, a young
man, two women huddled against each other, even a little dog with
its feet up in the air. The plaster casts really gave you an idea
of the instantaneous nature of this catastrophe.
Informational videos and a 3-D animated feature provided a visual
representation of some of the Roman villas and public areas, giving
us a good example of what Pompeii and Herculaneum must have looked
like before the volcanic eruption. The exhibition really showed
what a catastrophic event this volcanic eruption must have been
and how people were caught completely off-guard, unable to flee.
In essence, most of the victims choked almost instantly on the burning
clouds of pyroclastic ash that rained down on them as they were
trying to escape or hiding away in the cascades by the sea.
Main Hall of the Field Museum
The show also demonstrated that today the area around Vesuvius is extremely densely populated and a timeline indicated that the
amount of volcanic activity has noticeably increased over the last
300 years. Today the area around Naples is one of the most closely
monitored areas on the planet where the African Plate is subducting
under the Eurasian Plate. More seismic and volcanic activity is
definitely in store for this geologically unstable region.
After our visit to the Field Museum we walked across Grant Park
to Michigan Avenue since we needed to have one more tasty lunch
before we had to grab our luggage and start our respective journeys
home. We took the bus up Michigan Avenue, and as we unfolded our
CTA transit map to figure out what combination of buses we had to
take, the couple behind us and a young lady in front of us volunteered
their help in navigating us around their city. With their input
we chose the most appropriate route and we both noted that we were
surprised at this unsolicited but most welcome gesture of assistance.
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Entrance to Grant Park, walking northwest from
the Field Museum |
Chicago Vista east of Michigan Avenue |
Once back in the Lincoln Park Area, we headed back to our favourite
place, the "Austrian
Bakery" on Clark north of Fullerton, which offers delicious
samples of the type of food that both Linda and I grew up with,
dishes that are usually hard to come by in North America. We both
enjoyed a typical Austrian dish: "Fritattensuppe", a clear
beef broth with pancake strips, and I had a Wiener Schnitzel with
home-fried potatoes. It doesn't get much more Austrian than that
and we both purchased a few baked goods before we headed off. Linda
took the train back to her town in Indiana, while I made my way
through the rain to O'Hare Airport where I was randomly selected
for a thorough frisking, and just a couple of hours later I touched
down safely on home turf in Toronto.
As always, Chicago has been a beautiful getaway and we both had
a phenomenal time. Even the cool and clammy weather wasn't able
to stop us....
Useful books about Chicago:
Related Articles:
Hello from Chicago - First Impressions
Hello from Chicago - What a fabulously
photogenic city!
Hello from Chicago - Multiple Austrian
connections
Hello from Chicago - A personal tour
of the Chicago Cultural Center
Hello from Chicago - A visit to the
Pullman Historic District
Hello from Chicago - Chinatown and
Second City
Hello from Chicago - The Field Museum
and "Pompeii - Stories from an Eruption"
Here is our brand-new Chicago
Travel Guide
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