North Shore Views

Wonderful Wonderland Express

If there is one activity I can recommend for families with kids this holiday season, it is a visit to the Wonderland Express at the Chicago Botanic Garden. You will realize how aptly named it is when you see your kids’ eyes widen with wonder when the first train rounds the curve amid a miniature landscape of seasonal greens and flowers and buildings made from bark, twigs and moss. Frankly, even adults are fairly awestruck when they visit for the first time.

Wonderland Express is a 10,000-square-foot exhibition of miniature trains that wind through more than 80 miniature Chicago-area landmarks, including Navy Pier, Soldier Field, Chicago Stadium, the Chinatown Arch, the Art Institute, the South Shore Cultural Center, the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House, old Comiskey Park.

All buildings are handcrafted from natural materials like leaves, bark, and moss. Meanwhile, Krehbiel Gallery will be transformed into an English country train platform, and a seven-minute video will run in the auditorium, showing the Busse workshop and crew at work as they developed Wonderland Express.

Wonderland Express is open until January 1st from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (the exhibit closes at 3:00 on December 24 and is closed all day December 25). Admission for adults is $8.00 for members and $10 for non-members. Children 3-12 and seniors are $6 members/$8 non-members. Children under 2 get in free. This is a very popular exhibit so you should buy your tickets ahead to ensure you can get in on the day you want to go.

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Railroad Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden

Tags: Chicago Botanic Garden, Wonderland Express

Model Railroad Garden at Chicago Botanic Garden

When my son was small he was obsessed with trains. From the time he was a year and a half old until he was about six, trains were the love of his life. He watched Thomas the Tank Engine on TV, he read books about trains, and he accumulated an enormous collection of Thomas wooden trains and track and played with them by the hour. When there wasn’t a train around to play with, he made one. He would attach a line of  toy vehicles to the back of his tricycle and drive his train up and down the sidewalk. We would draw freight trains in chalk on the driveway. When we went out to eat he would create trains out of the sugar and jelly packets on our table. Gradually his obsession subsided and was replaced by other interests, like Pokemon and Nintendo. It makes me a little sad that those days of choo choo mania are gone, especially because I have never again seen my son quite as passionate about anything as he was about trains.

Last weekend we got to relive those train-crazed days when we went on a family outing to the Chicago Botanic Garden. I love the Gardens and could stay there for hours, there is so much to see. But this time, knowing the kids would have a limited attention span, we headed straight to the Model Railroad Garden, which, I figured, would have the best chance of engaging two kids with zero interest in plants and flowers.

It did not disappoint. It’s kind of hard not to smile when you see all of those American landmarks in miniature: the White House, Hollywood, Statue of Liberty, a working Old Faithful geyser, etc. And all surrounded by small scale gardens, vignettes with tiny people and animals and model trains chugging by. The coolest part is that all of the mini-replicas of famous landmark buildings are created out of twigs, acorns, bark, leaves and pebbles. This is the eleventh season for the railroad garden and every year  they add a major new landmark. Last year it was the White House. This year, historic Comiskey Park.

Even my kids, who had moaned and groaned about spending the afternoon at the Botanic Garden, thought the Railroad Garden was pretty cool and enjoyed discovering each new landmark or lifelike vignette as we wound our way through the garden. They finally had to admit that they were glad that we had come. My husband even made noises about how neat it would be to build a garden railroad in our yard. Thank goodness that idea was short-lived.

The Railroad Garden is open through October 31st from 10:00am -8:00 pm (until September 6- after that it closes at 5;00 pm). There’s a $5.00 admission fee for adults and $3.00 for kids. Garden members get a $1.00 off.

If you’re looking for a fun family activity, this one gets a thumbs up. It’ll bring out the kid in anyone.

Tags: Chicago Botanic Garden, Model Railroad Garden