Our main aim for our Chicago stopover (between Amtrak journeys) was to visit the Field Museum. We are sooo glad we did. It is brilliant, so much to see.

We spent a second day there, after checking out and leaving our cases at the Essex Inn, as our train did not leave until evening.
Did the huge 'earth timeline' exhibit - with lunch break!

Speaking of lunch -the Corner bakery cafe in the museum has a good range of tasty food at not unreasonable prices. And the staff there are great -spent ages telling us how to save a dollar on our lunch choices (bit of an American/Australian language barrier!) Allow plenty of time for this institution -it's worth it.

We loved the Field Museum! We purchased the Double Decker/Trolley pass and used that as transportation, drops you right off at the front door. We purchased the City Pass for Chicago which included a pass to the Field Museum. The extra bonus of this was not having to wait in the VERY long line. The lobby is wonderful, the museum attractions were great, interesting, and creative. Don’t want to say too much about those, so you can discover for yourself. Our City Pass included the “Underground Adventure” - not that great for us, but maybe for younger kids? There is a small “cafeteria area” (called the Siragusa Center) with vending machines with snacks and sodas. We had packed some PB&J sandwiches and snacks, then just bought a soda there. There was also a hot dog vendor outside. May have been more, but didn’t notice. It took us about 5-6 hours to look through pretty much the whole museum, eat, and stop at the very nice gift shop! Also, be sure to look out the windows when you get a chance…great views of Chicago!
We preferred visiting the Field Museum over the Museum of Science and Industry and the Shedd Aquarium.

We spent about 4 1/2 hours at the museum. The attractions were interesting with lots of available information to read for those that want to.

The dinosaur and Egyptian areas were my favorites.

Other people complained about the number of children. We arrived at opening and avoided most of that crowd. By the time we left though, they were getting thick and noisy and it became noticeably less peaceful.

If I only had time to see one attraction in Chicago, this would be it!

The staffs couldn't wait to go home on the dot at 5pm and closed all the main exhibits, even the toilets by 4.30pm when the closing time said 5pm for visitors. We traveled more than 1 hr to the museum with a family from Ohio to see the exhibits and being a big place, we are extremely upset about the deliberate half hour early closure. The whole bunch of staffs gathered at the information counter are sarcastic and rude when brought to their attention.