The Field Museum – Chicago, IL

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During our mini road trip to Chicago last weekend, we finally got to The Field Museum.  On our last attempt to visit the museum, we didn’t realize there was a Bear’s game that day and couldn’t find parking.  This visit was awesome since we were able to park at Soldier Field, which is right across the street from the Field Museum.  I think parking was $22 that day, which was worth it for the convenience since we were only in the city for a quick visit.

The museum was very crowded (of course I don’t know how it compares to any other day), and there was a deal for Illinois residents to get a free pass the day we went.  Bummer that I was too busy to visit on those days while I was still a resident!

Here’s a view of Sue, the famous T-rex!  This display & the elephants (the photo below Sue), are in the central part of the museum just past the entrance.  Very impressive.

We got the all access passes and the 3D movie we saw was: Mysteries of China (very cool show!)  The start time to the show was about 15 minutes from the time we got our tickets, which was perfect so we didn’t have to worry about watching the time so much while looking through the rest of the museum.

After the movie we started wandering around the museum.  I loved the dinosaur exhibit!  It was probably my favorite part of the museum.

But, after recently watching the movie, “The Ghost and the Darkness” and finding out that the lions that the movie was based on were at The Field Museum, I have been itching to see them.  That movie was intense, and the story is so sad but interesting.  We wove our way through the museum and found the display on the famous Tsavo Lions aka the Tsavo man-eaters.

Overall I enjoyed my visit to The Field Museum.  We were there about 3 hours, and we were pretty tired (of course we had been driving all morning).  The exhibits were well done, and there was a nice variety of things to see.

However, I must say that some of the exhibits could have used some more signs/arrows/maps to keep the direction of flow moving and to prevent people from missing certain sections within the exhibit particularly on the main floor.

My main piece of ADVICE:  The Egypt exhibit has 2 sections.  Section one is on the main floor & section two is on the lower level.  My recommendation is to skip section 1 and only walk through section 2.  (further details to follow:)

If you are going to go to the Egypt exhibit there are 2 sections.  One has a line in the basement and it informs you that there is another part of the exhibit on the main floor and that it is best to start with that exhibit.  Well, since we were already in the basement we figured we’d do them out-of-order but it’d be ok.  WRONG.  If you want to see both exhibits, definitely do them in order since the first section weaves you down to the second section.  Although the main level attraction sounds cool since it is a three-story recreation of a tomb and there are some hieroglyphics replicas, I personally didn’t think there was enough to see in that section compared to how long we had to wait in line before finding out we were funneling back into the line for the 2nd section (which we had already seen)

Good times at the museum though.  I’d definitely recommend a visit there if you haven’t been before!

Check out this link to other adventures & things to do in Chicago!