Friday night in Chicago

I had a job interview Friday in Chicago with an event marketing agency (for a job with their satellite office in Milwaukee - fingers' crossed!) so we decided that Robbie would come down after work on the train, and we'd spend the night in Chicago.

I managed to get us a great media rate at The Peninsula hotel right on Michigan Avenue. Had my first celebrity spotting episode at the hotel coffee shop while on a tour with the PR lady. Michael Keaton was but 2 metres from us as we popped in to take a look...he's in town directing a new film apparently.

Ms PR introduced me to Chef Graham Elliot Bowles, Executive Chef of their fine dining restaurant - Avenues, and named one of Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chefs in 2004 and nominated as a Rising Star Chef by the James Beard Foundation in 2006. Chef Bowles recently competed on The Food Networks "Iron Chef America". He's one of the young creative chefs playing with molecular gastronomy and is known for encrusting lamb with crushed Altoid mints - in a twist on mint sauce...!

We decided to pass on Avenues in favour of a Chicago treat - stuffed pizza pie and a beer (from the ridiculous to the sublime, or the sublime to the ridiculous - depending on your taste!). It was a miserable rainy night but we didn't have to venture far - Giordano's are famous for their deep-dish stuffed pizza pie (now a Chicago institution) and they're located right behind the hotel - at 730 N. Rush Street (don't worry - we couldn't finish it!).

We had fully intended to hit the blues bars, but the deep feather pillows (they give you a pillow menu when you check in!) at the Peninsula were calling....

Saturday morning we headed to the Museum of Science and Industry to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibition. A lot of people are talking about this controversial exhibition of whole bodies and fascinating human specimens that have been preserved through the process of “plastination,” a technique that replaces bodily fluids and fat with plastics.

More than 800,000 visitors to the Museum saw the first Body Worlds exhibition in 2005 and the queues were a little overwhelming on Saturday...We arrived at midday to be told the earliest we could get in would be 4.45pm so we spent the day wandering the rest of the museum.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the exhibition - some of it was fascinating, some very disturbing. It was curated by the founder of plastination - a German doctor, Dr Gunther Von Hagens. More than 20 bodies of men and women are on display in various poses, in various stages of "undress". In all cases the skin has been removed and each has varying degrees of flesh, muscles, and organs removed so as to better observe the inner workings of the body.

There are also a number of organs, similarly preserved, showing a healthy specimen compared with a diseased counterpart - for example a healthy lung, one attached by cancer, and the lung of a coal miner (the worst).

Considering I can't even cope with the bloody scenes in ER and Nip Tuck I didn't dawdle and was though in an hour. Although each of the bodies had been donated in full knowledge of the process, and that they could be used for medical education or exhibition, I found it a little too sensational. There was a distinct blurring of the line between an educational display and one where the dignity of death is on the verge of being exploited. Dr Von Hagnes has been called the Walt Disney of Death - and he's certainly making a killing ('scuse the pun!).