I'll be in around Fermilab during the next 12 days or so with about 8 other folks from cern.

Not sure if there will be time to meet up with any random massassians while I'm out there but if anyone lives in the area and knows of some good places to go during the weekends and evenings let us know (clubs, bars, restaurants, random touristy stuff, etc...)

Most of us are staying in a hotel in naperville and will have 2 cars I think, so we can go to places that require a bit of a journey.

I'll see how the week progresses and what the timetable is like when I get there, hopefully there will be some random time which I can use to meet up with some of ya if you're interested but I haven't got a clue yet on how busy I'll be.

cheers

The sears tower is pretty neat, honestly. Millennium Park is pretty awesome. Hell, just walking around town is fun.

I took a trip to chicago a few weeks ago. Was pretty fun.

Fermilab is cool, personally I loved working Argonne National Lab.

I just finished my undergrad at IIT which is located just south of the Loop (which is what people call downtown), so most of the stuff I know well is either near downtown, or near Argonne.

As for stuff to do, there are allot of clubs in the rush-street area (north of the loop). I never really bothered hitting them, as they tend to full of yuppies. There are literally bars everywhere, so it shouldn't be hard to find somewhere to drink. I cant think of any bars of particular interest, but if you want to bar crawl, check out the Addison Red-line stop (Wriggly Field).

There is an amazing movie theater across the interstate from Argonne called Hollywood Blvd .

Food wise, you can hit up greektown or chinatown, allot of good food there. If your pockets are VERY deep you can head north to Lovells.

On the more touristy end, yes there is the sears tower and millennium park. You can also hit the Art Institute, Field museum, Adler Planetarium, Shedd aquarium, all of which are in/around Grant part. Personally I always loved the Museum of Science and Industry as well, and I don't think you can ever get too old for that

Also, if you do drive downtown, take the time to drive down Lake-Shore Drive (LSD), It's a beautiful drive, just be sure to not to go wondering around on the south side. North is safe though, I've spent lots of time driving around the north shore randomly.

i'm ****ing jealous of you james.
I wish i hadnt become a drop out now.

If they discover the island of super heavy elements during your brief stay, call the coolest new isotope Ruthvenium. No shiny pink metals plz k thx.:awesome:

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  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Interesting that you're going to Chicago when September 10th is around the corner

I actually went to a skate comp on the southside. It was ****ing awesome.

Go see Blue Man Group!

since no ones mentioned it, navy pier is pretty nice for shopping/food/relaxin.

cool atrium there. saw an NPR broadcast there once when i was there.

also if its still there, theres a magic shop on the lower level near the bubba gump shrimp co. and they demonstrate the tricks that they sell and its really neat.

Aww, Fermilab. Totally getting pnwed by CERN.

Used to be a Magic Masters, then I think those all got bought out by some other, crappy magic company (the one in the Forum Shops at Caesar's in Vegas disappeared too). Last time I was at Navy peer there wasn't any sort of magic shop in that location anymore. I was kind of bummed, good childhood memories there. I was really into magic when I was a kid.

I went to Chicago at least once a year, every year, from when I was about 5 until I was 15 or 16 (I have family there). I second the mentions of Navy Peer and the aquarium/planetarium/museum/art gallery. Water Tower Place is worth checking out (popular shopping area), and you should eat at the Cheesecake factory there. Their food (actual food, not just cheesecake) is amazing, and there are probably 50 different kinds of cheesecake.

Can't really comment on bars since I haven't been there since turning 21, but I know there's a House of Blues there so you might want to see if anyone you're interested in is playing.

cheers for the tips all,

having a few issues getting my laptop on the fermilab network at the moment so this is just a quick response on someone's i've nabbed while they weren't looking

Yeah, why are you going? To gloat?

There's a "summer school" going on for 2/3rd PhD students and postdocs, school being a very loose term as it feels more like a general ATLAS conference at the moment. Sit in a room for a day, listen to a bunch of people talk about different topics, all of them being on the web so no need to take notes.

Half the people not even listening to the person speak and instead pissing around on their laptops....hold on a minute....that's exactly what I'm doing at the moment

Still, it's only the second day so far and there have been a few interesting things come up and there are a bunch of other interesting topics listed that I'll be paying attention on.

And don't worry, I plan on being back at CERN well in time for the turn on

edit, oh btw, Mountain Dew is fecking awesome!