Here is a list of 10 cheap things that you can do on your visit to the Windy City. From walking along Michigan Avenue and seeing the lake from Navy Pier, Chicago is a great city. Here is my list of top free (or cheap) things to do in and around Chicago:

1. Stained Glass Museum, Navy Pier
2. Millennium Park
3. Field Museum of Natural History
4. Eli’s Cheesecake World
5. Magnificent Mile
6. Museum of Science and Industry
7. Illinois Beach State Park (Zion)
8. Shedd Aquarium
9. Chicago Botanic Garden (Glencoe)
10. The Spindle (Berwyn)

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Today we had a drive around the Chicagoland area and had two interesting stops: we saw the spindle of cars in Berwyn, and toured the Eli’s Cheesecake World factory. More »

Illinois Beach State Park was established in 1948 and dedicated in 1965 as the nation’s first nature preserve. Today we visited the Southern Unit of this 4,100 acres state park near the Wisconsin border. More »

Just in time before the end of the year, here is my personal best and worst of 2005. More »

Today we visited Woodstock, IL, to see the set of one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day (1993), featuring Bill Murray. Groundhog Day was filmed here 13 years ago, but everything still looks just as in the movie. You can retrace Bill Murray’s footsteps from Ned’s Corner to Tip Top Bistro to the place where he stepped into the puddle, then across the street toward Gobbler’s Knob in Square Park. More »

Here’s my very personal Best and Worst of 2005. More »

In Rotterdam today a subterranean shopping area flooded with 600 cubic meters of boiling water from bursted pipes. Six people were brought to the hospital for second and third degree burns on their feet. Here are some photos. More »

This week a White-beaked dolphin stranded in the Oostvoornsemeer, a lake south-west of Rotterdam here in the Netherlands. It is a very popular spot for diving schools, and it is where we finished our PADI Open Water Diver course this summer. Two bird-watchers spotted the dolphin and called the Eerste Hulp Bij Zeezoogdieren (EHBZ), or First Aid for Sea Mammals, who think the dolphin swam into the Rotterdam harbor last weekend during a storm. More »

Do you know what the number 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 stands for? It’s the number of possible (9 by 9) Sudoku grids, as calculated by Bertram Felgenhauer. Since we saw so many Sudoku books on our last trip to London, and Amy started doing the puzzles on her way to work, I decided to pick up a small book of Sudoku puzzles myself. This was only last week and already I am hooked; it’s incredible how addicting these puzzles are, and how quickly I am longing for new and more complicated ones. More »

Last week, the Spanish Parliament voted to implement a smoking ban in public places such as restaurants and work places. The ban will go into effect on New Year’s Day. More »