When in Rome, do as Romans...

Day 2 started like any other normal day around our house. We ordered room service and enjoyed breakfast in bed. I know. Iknow. A girl can still dream of how vacations used to be right?!? Truthfully, we did order room service breakfast for the girls. Downtown Chicago isn't the kind of area that serves Eggo on every corner. I ordered them a waffle and a fruit plate. And $58.00 later our girls were full and ready for the day. Translation: they barely touched the outrageously overpriced (albeit delicious) breakfast and opted for a few Cheerios they found from the day before!

Cheerio snack. In the stroller. In the hotel room.

Being cute is such hard work!

It turns out that in Chicago (or probably any other place where people primarily get around by taxi) children can ride in laps. We caught a cab, loaded our gigantic sroller in the trunk, and set off for the Sears Tower. Supposedly the Tower is now the Willis Tower, but no one has a clue what Willis Tower is so I will just call it Sears Tower. Sorry Willis.

After a 10 minute or so wait, we boarded the elevator and up we went. Remember how I mentioned in Part 1 of this vacation how proud Hubs and I had been 8 months ago and how brilliant we thought we were when it came to planning for everything on a trip? Well, it is safe to say that we did not plan on the elevator flying upward at a rate of 25 feet/second or the ear pain that is pretty much inevitable. Clearly we still have a lot to learn!

We tried to get the girls to drink from their straw cups to help relieve the pain and luckily made it with little fussiness. Once up top, on the 99th floor, it was amazing! You could literally see for miles. Forty miles, to be exact, on a clear day. The girls enjoyed running around and tried their hardest to get past the railings (there was glass also so no worries). The way back down was less eventful up until the point where they ushered disabled/stroller visitors to a different path than regular visitors. Somehow our fearless leader, Hubs/Dada, lead us to a restricted, you-shouldn't-be-here area. It was special. When a worker found us, they took us back the right direction. They didn't hassle us too much about the scenic route we took because, apparently, two people with a stroller and twins don't exactly fit the profile of a terrorist!

Overlooking the Windy City!

Our exquisite, filling breakfast had worn off by this point so we stopped a few locals and asked where the best Chicago deep dish pizza could be found. Everyone we asked agreed that Giordano's was the place to go! Luckily it was only 2 blocks away and full of people dressed in business suits. We knew we had found a good place at that point. We ordered the girls lasagna and a pizza for us to share. After ordering, our sweet server returned and asked if we would like the girls' food to come out first. We exchanged odd looks and she explained further. "Your pizza is going to take 40 minutes or more to cook. Would you like their food first?" Hmm...odd looks exchanged again. I think you get the point. When our server brought the pizza to the table, she asked if we needed anything else. We politely answered that we needed it boxed up and a check! The pizza was great...12 hours later, once we arrived in Erie. Zero for two on meals this day...

After lunch we headed to Shedd Aquarium. Supposedly this aquarium is one of the best in the world. I thought it was very neat and, since I haven't been to many aquariums, I would have to agree. There were many fish, coral, etc to see, but unfortunately when you are with babies you don't exactly have time to learn about the drought and flood conditions of the Amazon River Basin. You have to get in, go see the big fish (the ones the girls can actually track), and get out. We spent time underground watching the underwater portion of the dolphin show, saw manatees up close, and the girls got seriously splashed by a huge sea lion!

Hands on Area for the Kiddos
Don't worry, it's not real!

Gabby and the Sea Lion she fondly called 'Tinkerbell-bell-bell!'

Dolphins from Underwater

Lilly getting a (too) close look at the Manatee

The highlight of the day, however, was the penguins. Miss G and Miss L have had a love affair with penguins that dates back to last December. They went nuts when they saw all the penguins (there were probably 30 or more) and were really disgruntled when Daddy didn't break through the glass and let them swim with the little black and white creatures. Lucky for us there were a couple penguin statues close by that were almost as good as the real deal. The people small crowd that gathered to watch the 'twins' play with the penguins was not a good deal. I always joke about knowing what animals in a zoo must feel like, but this took it to a whole new level.

So close, yet so far away...

Alright, perhaps she is cute enough for people to stop and watch!

As you can imagine, the girls were exhausted by this point. We stopped along the street and got the girls a Chicago style hot dog, without the onions and other fixings (so we basically got a regular hot dog and called it 'Chicago-style') and began the 6 hour drive to Erie!