Reasons to agree: +6
My son at Millennium Park on our Chicago Bike Ride
- If you are lucky you can find parallel parking for free around Lincoln Park Zoo.
- Parking is $1.00 an hour, if you can find any, near Northerly Island. I drove there with 2 bikes in my car, and my 7 year old son, and we rode to Millennium Park and back.
- Kids ride the Metra free on the weekends.
- The Water Tower Place Mall does parking validation.
- It costs $7 per adult to ride to Chicago Union Station (week-end passes, kids ride free). From there you can walk to a number of places:
- Millennium Park.
- In the summer, kids can play in the fountain. Bring towels, and a change of clothes. It is sort of white trash, but they can change in the bathrooms.
- Each time you go down the kids will probably want to look at the bean, and get their photo taken.
- I should probably walk the whole park once. Their are some statues on the south end I have never seen.
- Winter
- Kris Kringle Market Chicago
- We walked, with 3 kids, and 2 strollers, all the way to the Hancock Building. It was a pretty long walk. When we got back to Navy Pear we took a water taxi bat to Union Station, to save our legs, and to make a train.
- Apparently a portion of the Field Museum is free. Parking is not free, and I don't think a train will get you there. If you walk from Union Station, head straight for the lake, as some of the neighborhood between the two can be a little dicey. I guess you could ride a buss, but figuring out a train schedule is pushing it for me, as I don't make it into the city very often. Adding a bus schedule might be a little much. Also I don't like cabs, but you can figure your own life out, OK?
- Sales tax is high in Chicago.
- It costs $20 at a minimum to park in Chicago.
- It cost $7 for a weekend pass. So if you want to go in as a couple it costs $14 just to get there.
- The Stained Glass Museum, Navy Pier is boring. Who cares?
- The Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion may be "the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States" but it is more likely the best example of overly ornate-as-a-substitution-for-sophisticated" outdoor museum in the USA. It is not worth going to, just to look at, unless their is a concert.
- Navy Peer is kind of stupid... They have a Ferris-Wheel, but so does the state fair... sure it gives you a great view, but so does walking along the beach. Then there is not much else to see. OK. OK. I've never actually paid to ride the Ferris-Wheel. I hear it is sort of cool. In fact, I wouldn't mind going on it... But I imagine if your drove a long way to See Chicago, and all you did was go to Navy Peer, which I imagine some people do... then you would probably be disappointing .. I only critisize it because I am amazed at how many millions of people visit it each year... I don't hat crowds as much as my wife, and so I wouldn't mind going back.
Score:
# of reasons to agree: +6
# of reasons to disagree: --6
# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: +7/2 = 3.5
# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0
Total Idea Score: +4.5
Webpages that agree:
- http://www.groupon.com/local/chicago/things-to-do
- http://www.wolfstad.com/2006/01/top-10-budget-things-to-do-in-chicago/
- http://thelocaltourist.com/cities/chicago/cheap-things-do-chicago
- http://gochicago.about.com/od/attractionsandlandmarks/tp/free_chicago.htm
You don't have to pay anything to look at this brachiosaurus outside the Chicago Field Museum.
