Friday 23 June 2023
Today we explored Lincoln Park, starting with a superb brunch at the delightful Bourgeois Pig cafe. Lincoln Park is a large green space just north of Chicago, and we'd set a day aside to explore it with its zoo, botanical conservatory and lakeside location. We started with the zoo (as it was closing early for a private event) - it was free and there were penguins - what's not to love?
We headed for the African zone, which I have an affinity with, having seen a lot of these animals in the semi-wild.
But it didn't take long before I wasn't sure if this was the right place to be seeing them. I've seen rhinos in a safari park in Namibia, and then there was a side event of an elephant clan charging another, and suddenly it didn't seem right for this rhino to be pottering around inside a small enclosure in Chicago. My unease heightened when we saw the polar bears. Polar bears in this heat?!
I accept that I am blessed that I've been able to travel, and I've seen a lot of animals, such as my dearest, smelly and squawky penguins in their natural environment. I also understand that it's important to educate those who don't have that opportunity - although with the internet I argue that having to see a polar bear in the flesh isn't necessary when you can see amazing footage of them online. Surely this is better than them chasing a plastic cube full of carrots and fish in a zoo with a small pond to swim in? I do understand that some species are rare and that zoos can help protect those. But it increasingly feels wrong that zoos have animals that aren't under threat in their pad. Is it because they don't get funded if they have x number of animals including the weird geckos no-one has heard of? Not my field...
Anyway, I'm always happy to see a penguin - these are South African ones. I get that they're not in their natural environment by any means (I've seen penguins in their natural environment in the Falklands, South Georgia and Cape Town), but they didn't seem stressed and the water hose would have cooled them.
We walked through the aviary and spotted cranes, Hadada ibis and Nicobar pigeon.
And the meerkats are always fun to watch.
We left the zoo and headed for the Conservatory. It was full of leafy indulgence as I'd imagined, including a lovely fern area which puts the damp corner in our back yard, with its 3 pots of ferns, to shame!
The orchids were beautiful.
And I liked the shrimp plants, because they looked exactly like their label. As did the sausage plants.
Outside in the park there were wedding parties having photos against the Chicago backdrop. You can see why.
Once we'd sated ourselves with plants we headed for the lake, and stumbled across this wonderful Victorian lily pond (Alfred Caldwell lily pond). It was such a beautiful and serene spot. We could hear frogs croaking - from my Attenborough training it sounded like a bull frog making his presence known - but we couldn't see them. We did however stumble across a wedding (not literally) - such a tranquil setting.
We had a drink by the lakeside then had a wonderful tapas supper in Ba Ba Reeba. When we arrived they asked us if we knew what Spanish tapas were - I forget that Barcelona/Seville/Cordoba etc is a long way from Chicago and for us Europeans, "popping over to Spain" isn't a major trip as it would be from the USA.
We had had an early supper however the night was but young so we headed down to Navy Pier. The views back to downtown Chicago were, once again, lovely.
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