Cincinnati Zoo

I love the zoo! So while we were in Cincinnati on Saturday we visited the zoo. I had read a lot of good things about it and we weren't disappointed. We saw lots of cool animals and had a great time listening to trainers talk about different animals. We watched while the trainers worked with this rhino.

We saw some really cute lemurs.

There were some really big apes.

Rory really liked the tunnel of mist. :) It was pretty crazy. You can't see through to the other side so I was always afraid I was going to run in to someone. A lot of little kids were pretty scared to go through. :) If you look carefully you can see Rory coming out of the mist in the picture.

They had the cutest little penguins I've ever seen. They were just living in a little pond area outside.

It was hilarious to watch them try and swim around. I'm pretty sure these are babies or young penguins. They would pretty much shake their whole body as they moved around in the water. It was really funny to watch.

We watched a cheetah show. It was really cool. They had the cheetahs run through the cage. It was pretty amazing how fast they went. We tried to get a moving picture, but there was no way to take it with the cheetah moving that fast. They are pretty amazing animals.

I can't remember what kind of cat this was. But it jumps super high. Rory got an awesome picture of it jumping up to hit the ball.

I think this is the first zoo I've ever seen manatees in. Usually they're just in aquariums. In the picture below there is a baby manatee and the mom is nudging it to move. :) There were divers in the tank doing some cleaning, that's why you see the hoses.

This peacock was just wandering around. Rory and I were taking a little break and sitting at a table and it walked right up to us because there were some cracker crumbs on the floor. I didn't zoom in at all for this picture. It was super close to us.

We watched the trainers feed the polar bears. That was kind of fun. I wish I had gotten a picture of the one who kept standing on his back legs to get the fish.

We had a great time at the zoo. Both of us were exhausted by the time we were done. We did a lot of walking and it was pretty hot and humid. But the zoo was amazing and well worth it.

Josh Groban

Last weekend Rory and I went to Cincinnati for the Josh Groban concert. We drove up Friday after Rory got off work. It was about 2 hours to our hotel. Then from the hotel to the concert should have been about 15 or 20 minutes, but it took much longer. The arena our concert was at is located on the waterfront right next to the Reds baseball stadium. Lucky for us there was a Reds game that night. So we got within a mile of the stadium and then we stopped moving. We finally got out of the traffic jam and then trying to find parking was a nightmare. Finally we found something and then rushed to the concert. We made it just before 8 when it was supposed to start.

Elew the rock/jazz pianist opened the concert. He was on American's Got Talent. He's really good and I enjoyed listening to him play the piano. He played for half an hour and then we waited another half an hour and then Josh Groban came out.

He started his performance on a little stage in the middle of the arena. It was cool because he was pretty much right in front of us!

He did a couple songs in the middle and then moved up to the big stage. I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't come out really well.

The backdrop was pretty cool and they put different images and things on it for the different songs. He sang some of his new songs and some of his classics.

About half way through the concert Groban came back to the middle stage. He did a couple more songs there.

Josh Groban talked to the audience a lot and a lot of it was pretty funny. He did a good job entertaining even when he wasn't singing. At the end of the concert when he was doing his encore the baseball game started shooting off fireworks. They were really loud. He made some jokes about it and then finally just had to sit and wait while they had the firework finale because it was constant loud booms. It was pretty crazy but kind of funny too. The concert was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it.

Nashville

Last weekend Rory and I decided to take a trip down to Nashville, Tennessee. Rory had a half day at work on Friday so we took off on our trip around 12:30. It is a little less than 3 hours away so it was a quick drive down. We got there in the early afternoon and we headed over to the Gaylord Opryland Resort. It was one of the coolest resorts I've ever seen. Everything is inside, but there are these amazing gardens and waterfalls all over.

They also had little shops and places to eat. We found these outside one of the shops. :)

After we walked around for a while we went over to the Grand Ole Opry. We were too late for tours so we just went to their gift shop.

For dinner that night we tried out Bar-B-Cutie. It was kind of like a fast food BBQ place. It was actually pretty good. From there we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed the hot tub for a bit and then played a game and called it a night.

Saturday morning we went downtown to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It's in a pretty cool building. You can see it in the building before.

We saw some great old country performing costumes.

We also saw this car. There were guns all over built into it. It was pretty sweet.

The car below used to belong to Elvis. You can kind of see all the different compartments in the picture below. He had his own little fridge and all sorts of things. It was pretty cool.

There were a few huge walls in the museum covered with these records. They showed all the albums that went platinum or gold.

After the museum we went back to the hotel to rest during the heat of the day. It was pretty hot. Later we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. We had fajitas that were delicious.

After dinner we walked down Broadway St. where there are a lot of shops and bars. We stopped in at one of the touristy shops just for fun.

I guess this is a famous record shop. At least the sign was cool. :)

Sunday morning we went to church and then headed over to the Parthenon. I was excited to visit the Parthenon. I was just in Greece, but the Parthenon there is falling apart. This is an exact replica of how it used to be. Plus it's in the Percy Jackson movie so I thought it would be fun to see. :)

This is the statue of Athena inside the Parthenon. It was pretty big. It's completely covered in gold flakes.

After the Parthenon we headed home. We had a great weekend in Nashville!

The Zoo!

I love the zoo! A couple Saturdays ago Rory and I decided to check out the Louisville Zoo. Besides the fact that it was really hot, it was a lot of fun!

Here's Rory with some pretty cool Rhinos.

The giraffes wouldn't come close for a better picture. But they were still fun to watch.

These elephants were a lot of fun to watch. They can do so much with their trunks. It's pretty amazing.

I wish I could remember what this animal was called. But they had really cool curvy horns so we had to take a picture. :)

The arctic part of the zoo was really cool. They had a lot of props and different scenery things set up to make it seem like you were in the arctic. This polar bear was doing a little dance. For as long as we watched him he kept walking forwards around the corner and disappear and then he would walk backwards into view. It was pretty funny to watch.

We also saw some really cool sea lions and a seal. We got to watch while the trainers came out and worked with them. After the sea lion show we were pretty tired and hot so we called it a day. We didn't see all of the animals or shows we wanted to so I guess we'll have to go back again! :) But the ones we saw were great! We had an awesome time!

Chicago!

After enjoying a wonderful day at Churchill downs on Friday, Saturday morning came bright and early as we had to catch a 6 am flight to Chicago. We got in to Chicago about 6 am because of the time change. We went to our hotel and luckily they had a room ready so we put our bags in and then went to the train station. We spent a lot of time on those trains. It took about 30 minutes to get to downtown Chicago. But we had a pretty nice hotel for a lot cheaper than being downtown so it was worth the ride.

Our first stop was the Field Museum! This dinosaur is Lucy. :)

Our next stop, the Adler Planetarium. It was pretty cool! The big thing Rory is standing in front of us is the Atwood Sphere. It was built in 1913. It's almost 100 years old! You can see in the bottom right hand corner there are people sitting in a big metal box thing. Once everyone is in it moves up into the sphere and there is a planetarium inside. They show you the constellations and talk to you about them.

Outside the planetarium.

This was the cool view of the Chicago skyline you could see from the planetarium.

Our last stop of the day was the Shedd Aquarium. It was packed with people and we were really tired. But the exhibits were really cool. Here we are looking at a sweet frog.

We were there on the last day of their big jellyfish exhibit. It was pretty neat seeing all of the different kinds of jellyfish. Here are a couple really cool pictures we took.

To finish off our day in the city Mike found some good reviews for a pizza place called Giordano's. Come to find out it's one of the best places to get deep dish pizza in the city. Rory took the leftover pizza to work for lunch and he had some very jealous co-workers. The pizza was delicious. They recommended we get the pizza with green peppers, onions, canadian bacon, and mushrooms. And boy did it have a lot of cheese. The toppings were in between two large layers of cheese. Yummy! :) It was pretty intense. I was proud to get through one slice!

Day two started at Millenium Park. Right before we got there I made a quick pit stop at Walgreens to pick up another umbrella because it looked like it was going to pour. The day before Rory and I got caught with one umbrella and that wasn't so fun.

The Bean! This was really cool to see and a lot of fun to take pictures by.

While we were at the Bean it began to rain. So we pulled out our umbrellas and continued walking around the park. And then the downpour began. Boy was I happy I had my own umbrella. I was getting wet enough even with my own. We found an information office and ducked inside quick to see if the rain would calm down and rethink our plan for the day. After a little it seemed to have calmed down a little so we ventured out to get a bus to Navy Pier. Along the way we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts for a quick hot chocolate. :)

Navy Pier was a lot of fun to walk around. Part of it was inside which was nice when it was raining. But the rain did let up off and on so we could enjoy the outside as well. There was a cool ferris wheel you could ride and get a great view of the city. Too bad it wasn't running because of the rain.

When we got to Navy Pier we couldn't see the city skyline because of the thick fog. After another rain it cleared up! We were glad we could finally get a picture.

After the Navy Pier it was time for lunch. We took a bus trying to go to the Magnificent Mile to find a local restaurant. We got off the bus and it was raining really hard so we just found a little restaurant and stopped there. It wasn't local food, but it was really good just the same. Below I am running across the street to the restaurant trying to not get even more wet!

After lunch we found the Magnificent Mile and began walking along the street. Luckily it had finally stopped raining. We stopped at the Hershey's store for a bit.

This is a water tower. It is one of the few buildings that survived the huge fire that destroyed most of Chicago.

At the end of our walk we came to the John Hancock Tower (aka the Sear's Tower). We were really hoping it wouldn't be too foggy that we wouldn't be able to see anything.

Luckily it wasn't foggy at all! We had a great view off the whole city!

We had a great view of the Navy Pier as well. It's the skinny strip of land covered in white buildings.

This is how Rory and I spent most of our trips back to the hotel on the train. We were drained by the end of the day and sitting there for 30 minutes puts you to sleep. :)

We had a blast visiting Chicago. The rain tried to ruin our trip, but luckily we still got to do everything we wanted. I may have spent most of the time with soggy shoes and wet pants, but it was worth it! Hopefully we'll get a chance to visit again sometime and visit Wrigley Field!