Trains, Humidity, Walking, and Art- In that Order

So, here's a story of three lovely ladies, Katie, A & R, who one morning boarded a train downstate and headed for the big shiny city of Chicago.

 It was very humid that day, but the girls braved it and walked miles and miles.

 They marveled in the beauty of Union Station:

They were on no schedule, so when Katie saw a steeple and said, "let's check it out!" they found a treasure at Old St. Patrick's Church.  The pictures can't come close to doing it justice:

 They had lunch at a delicious cafe:

And they eventually made their way to the Art Institute of Chicago (where a lion photo bombed the only picture of all three of them together.)

 They saw some Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, and more:

 But their favorite was El Greco:

 And stuff like this:

They also had some fun in the non no-one-should-talk-because this-is-fancy-art galleries. 

No one told R that there wasn't a knight in that shining armor.

 We usually didn't enjoy the modern art as much, but A wanted to keep this for her dorm room.

They practiced their freeze modeling.

And Katie ran into and tripped over the camouflaged-stay-out-or-else-bungee-cords when looking at a pinata sculpture. A & R were concerned that alarms might go off, but not concerned enough to leave without documenting it with a series of pictures first.

  And here was R's "this is not art" face.  We used that more than a few times.

When scrolling through pictures later in the day and seeing this one, R asked Katie, "Wait, when did we go to this church?" and A said, "Did you sneak off without us!?!"  Katie then reminded them about the miniature gallery that they almost missed on the sublevel of the institute.  This miniature of a church is only about two feet tall. 

 They also got to see the featured exhibit of Impressionism and Fashion, which was very cool but photography was prohibited. :(

They had a little bit of time and thought they might go up to the top of the Sears Willis Tower.  Unfortunately, there was a two hour wait and they didn't imagine that the train would hold at the station for the silly small town girls who were late.  Katie could have killed the two hours listening the the Irish guard in the lobby talk-about anything- as long as she got to hear more of his accent...

After that there was even more humidity and smoothies lots more walking and popcorn and another train.  It was a lovely adventure and a great end of summer day!


...however, there are another set of pictures that tell a different version of the day.

You see, A & R have a summer bucket list.  A is going away to college and leaving R to survive her senior year alone.  Quite awhile ago, they decided that they wanted to see the Art Institute.  They planned to take the train.  But A's mom and dad said "no."  And R's mom and dad said "no."  No Chicago without a responsible parent.

And A & R said "no" to the whole parent idea.  They did however pitch the idea of taking a responsible Katie instead.  And Katie and all the moms and dads said "yes."

Which leads to Katie the chaperone and two best teenaged friends on an adventure.  And we decided that we should take lots of pictures with cool A & R having fun and me pretending to not be with them.

Which led to all of this:

...I think that I may just like the second set of pictures better :)