Pictures of The Chicago Bean

Posted by Arthur in Chicago, Illinois, Photos, Travel

Cloud Gate, nicknamed ‘The Bean’ because of its bean-like shape, is a sculpture in Chicago by British artist Anish Kapoor. The highly polished 100-ton steel structure was unveiled in May 2006 and forms the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park. I’ve seen it several times and think it’s a really cool sculpture. Here are some photos from our visit last Saturday:

Chicago St Pat Day 2009 175 (14-Mar)

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March 18th 2009 | 3:13 am CET | 1 Comment »

DeLoreans in Chicago St Patrick’s Day Parade

Posted by Arthur in Chicago, Illinois, Movies, Pop culture

At the end of the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Chicago last Saturday, they had three DeLorean cars! As a fan of the Back to the Future movies and someone who had never seen an actual DeLorean before, I thought this was very cool. Only approximately 9,000 of these gull-winged cars were made in 1981 and 1982 by the Delorean Motor Company in a factory in Northern Ireland, hence these Irish cars were in the parade. Only about 6,500 DeLorean DMC-12s are believed to still exist today.

Chicago St Pat Day 2009 148 (14-Mar)

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March 17th 2009 | 2:16 pm CET | 1 Comment »

St Patrick’s Day Parade in Chicago

Posted by Arthur in Chicago, Events, Illinois, Life in America

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everyone!! Last Saturday we went to downtown Chicago to witness the Chicago River going green and after that we walked to Grant Park for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which started at noon. The parade lasted for about 3 hours, which was really too long, but it was still fun. Lots of groups gave out free stuff (like green hats, beads, candy, etc.) and it was a sport trying to get as much as you can (we didn’t get much though).

Chicago St Pat Day 2009 088 (14-Mar)

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March 17th 2009 | 3:17 am CET | No Comments »

Maple Syrup Hike at Ryerson LCFP

Posted by Arthur in Forest Preserves, Illinois, Nature

Today we participated in one of the Maple Syrup Hikes at Ryerson Conservation Area. On the one-hour program we learned about the Sugar Maple trees that make sweet sap and how they tap them to make syrup. I love maple syrup on my pancakes and waffles and have always wanted to see this.

Ryerson Woods 038 (15-Mar)

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March 15th 2009 | 9:40 pm CET | No Comments »

Top Posts

Posted by Arthur in Personal, Websites & Tools

This is my 300th post on this blog. To commemorate today’s milestone I thought it would be fun to have a look at the stats and see what our most visited posts have been over the years. These posts are all pretty old as they have had the most accumulative hits over the years:

  1. Hidden Security Tags in Old Navy Jeans
  2. The Rat Temple of Rajasthan
  3. Pirates of the Carribean 2: a rip-off of Monkey Island?
  4. Top 10 Things to do in Tunisia
  5. Quechuas Toss and Go Seconds Tents
  6. Pop Tarts with Beef Gelatin
  7. Top 10 Budget Things to do in Chicago
  8. Scuba in Europe’s Largest Swimming Pool
  9. Top 10 Things to do in South Florida and the Keys
  10. Driverless Robot Buses Crash

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March 15th 2009 | 8:56 am CET | No Comments »

Chicago River Goes Green

Posted by Arthur in Chicago, Events, Illinois

Today we traveled to Chicago by Metra train for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the dying of the Chicago River! We arrived at Union Station at 8:30 and walked around Millennium Park a bit before heading to the river, which was scheduled to be greenified at 10:45. The riverside east of Michigan Avenue Bridge was packed with thousands of people in green hats, green wigs, green t-shirts and green everything.

Chicago St Pat Day 2009 054 (14-Mar)
Chicago Riverwalk

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March 14th 2009 | 10:06 pm CET | No Comments »

Foto Friday: Sears Tower

Posted by Arthur in Chicago, Foto Friday, Illinois

I saw on the news yesterday that the Sears Tower here in Chicago is being renamed to Willis Tower. A global insurance broker, Willis Group Holdings, has announced that it will place its name on the 110-story skyscraper and lease 140,000 square feet of office space in the building. Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world when it was built in 1973 and it still is the tallest building in the western hemisphere.

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March 13th 2009 | 10:02 am CET | No Comments »

Happy Holi!

Posted by Amy in Events, Travel

Today marks the day when India plays Holi. Holi is the festival of colors and we had a lot of fun when we were in India during Holi in 2006. This Bollywood music video gives you an idea of the chaos that is Holi.

March 12th 2009 | 7:20 pm CET | No Comments »

Good Ol’ Fashioned Adventure Games

Posted by Arthur in Pop culture

LucasArts is expected to release Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings this spring. The trailer looks very cool and I would love to play this game, but unfortunately it is not coming out on the PlayStation 3, which is the only gaming console I have. The game has been in the making for years but apparently LucasArts recently dropped Xbox 360 and PS3 from this title’s release because it would be too expensive to make. I’m so surprised that new games like this would come out for PS2 and not PS3 … I’m very disappointed.

Anyway, seeing the trailer reminded me of some of my most favorite adventures games of 20 years ago. I was too young to really get into the text-based computer games but starting in the late 1980s I was a huge fan of graphic adventure games like the Space Quest series by Sierra On-line and classics like Monkey Island by Lucasfilm.

Here is a list of my favorite classic adventure games:

 

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March 11th 2009 | 1:48 pm CET | No Comments »

Frying pan foul-up

Posted by Amy in Shopping & Stuff

We used to like to make fries at home. In Holland we had a very nice large black pot with a wire fry basket insert and a glass lid. It was perfect to use for stove-top frying, and we loved it. So why the heck didn’t we bring it with us?! Because it was big, bulky, and breakable, and we thought it would be easily replaced. Ha!

We looked for frying pans with baskets at all our local shops (Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears, Walmart, Target, etc) but they only sell electric fryers. So I had a look online. Plenty of shops sell minuscule pots of 4 quarts or less. I figured we need at least 7 quarts, but even bigger would be better (I guess our beloved old one was 9 or 10). I found one restaurant specialty shop that sold baskets and fryers separately at reasonable prices, but shipping was crazy (about the same price as the implements themselves). Then I found out that Farberware makes a 7Q fryer with a basket, and that I could purchase it from Target.com with reasonable shipping costs. Yay! I placed my order.

7Q Fryer

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March 7th 2009 | 3:56 pm CET | No Comments »