I think the last entry is my favorite. It was written in three parts, actually. The first few grafs were done in my apartment after completion of Part NINE. The middle was done at the ballpark and the dialogue and end was done at home in bed at 1:30 a.m. after two beers. Here now is Chapter 11. To see how it all began, go here.

We take our leftover pizza back to the hotel and board the trolley near the Art Institute to go to the Museum Campus. We�re dropped off in front of the Field Museum, but across the street, next to an expansive construction site, which used to be Soldier Field. I saw my first Notre Dame football game in that stadium, when Notre Dame played Northwestern on Sept. 3, 1994. It was a home game for the Wildcats, but 75 percent of the stadium was cheering for the Irish. The cheerleaders even did a home cheer wherein four groups head off to the four corners of the field and hold up a sign so that a slow, loud chant of �WE ... ARE ... N .... D!� makes its way around the stadium.

But now Soldier Field looks nothing like an athletic venue. The changes being made are not so much a renovation as a tearing-it-down-to-nearly-nothing-and-rebuilding-it. Technically, because the support structure will remain in place and it remains on the original foundation, it is a renovation. But judging from the diagrams posted on the �Soldier Field Renovation� board near the entrance to the viewing platform (yes, they actually had bleachers set up), it�s not going to look much like Soldier Field anymore. The trademark columns will remain, but they�re adding a rounded glass-enclosed upper section that will give the appearance of a spaceship having landed on Soldier Field. It�s hideous, if you ask me. When I first saw the plans in the paper, I only noticed the aerial view, which doesn�t look as bad. But to see it from the side, it�s horrendous. It would be like putting a dome on Yankee Stadium.

We cross the street and enter the Field Museum to see the chocolate exhibit. When we buy our tickets, they give us a free piece of chocolate. At the entrance to the exhibit itself, they ask that you throw out your wrappers or any uneated chocolate. I say I�d rather people give me their uneaten chocolate. Other than that, I find it ironic that they give you chocolate before the chocolate exhibit, but you can�t bring the chocolate into the chocolate exhibit.

It tells the story of chocolate from its earliest known beginnings, when it was a luxury for royalty and a form of currency in ancient Central and South American cultures. Europeans adopted it, it was sweetened along the way, and then someone � one of the greatest people in the history of man, if you ask me � develops a way to make it with milk. Hence, milk chocolate. I think it was Nestle. Anyway, he was a genius.

There�s a section on how chocolate calms people and is, essentially, a drug when looked at that way. Near the end of the display, a series of video screens has interviews with people talking about chocolate. One old woman explains how she and her friends never sit down for a game of Mah Jong without chocolate. They show a chef making desserts with chocolate.

I just want chocolate, and frankly, the end is the most anticipated part of the exhibit for me. That�s where the gift shop is, and as soon as we walk in, we see the half-pound bar in front of us. I pick it up and cradle it as we browse the rest of the offerings. But the big bar is all I need, and Casey buys it for me.

Before leaving, we make our way to the regular museum gift shop just for a look and see a display of shoes � a two-floor high wall covered with them. It�s a neat little display.

Back outside, we walk down the peninsula toward Adler Planetarium. I want to get a daytime photo of the skyline from the lakeshore to go with my nighttime shot. While waiting for the free trolley at the end of the peninsula, we brace ourselves against the stiff breeze off the lake and I eat some chocolate. On the trolley, we get seats, which is a good thing because once we make the stop at the Field Museum, the trolley fills up and people are crowded in the aisle.

Our driver introduces himself. �Good afternoon, folks,� he says, �my name is Dave and welcome to my trolley. This is the trolley of love. Unless you don�t like your ride, then my name is Steve. This is also the singing trolley.�

Dave asks for requests and a chunky, bratty kid shouts, �NO BRITTNEY SPEARS!� So Dave sings a few lines from �Oops I Did It Again,� prefacing it with some lame story about his baby niece and her diaper. The first stop is close to Museum Campus, so Dave waits until making that first stop before going into his first number. He introduces it as �My imitation of Ewan MacGregor�s imitation of Elton John� and goes into �Your Song.� It�s OK. Elton�s is best, though.

We get out at our stop near the Art Institute and I need to pause here. I�ve been writing �Art Institute� so much over the past few entries and I�ve wanted to shorten it to �AI,� but I refuse because somewhere along the line, probably after Speilberg inexplicably released the movie, Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers has adopted it as his secondary nickname (after �The Answer�). But what bothers me most is how, in an interview with reporters while sitting in the passenger seat of a car, Iverson�s mother referred to him as �AI.� She was pissed at the media after Iverson was arrested for storming into a house with a gun on July 3 looking for his wife. She said something to the affect of, �You�re doing this because AI is AI� or whatever. Who, all of a sudden, refers to her child by his PR nickname? On top of it, she looked like she was young enough to be his sister, or wife.

Anyway, back to the Art Institute. Dave gives us a little history nugget before the stop, explaining that Michigan Avenue used to be right on the lakeshore, but after the big fire started by the cow in the late 1800s, they bulldozed all the ash, trash and burned-down buildings into the lake, creating a landfill and expanding the city eastward. So the Art Institute and everything east of it was water 120 years ago.

We get out and enter one of the stores along Michigan to buy two more cows, these for ourselves, having seen their �buy one get one half price� offer the other day after purchasing the cows for Moom and Jim. We already know which two we want, and we know they have them because we�d seen them through the window of the closed store the other day. We buy �Starry, Starry Cow,� painted like Van Gogh�s �Starry Night� and �Moo Jersey Diner,� a down on a tiled floor with a counter on its back and stools on the floor.

After changing for dinner, we head uptown again to eat at a noodle restaurant and it�s good. Casey really wanted them, though I was actually planning on not having beef for a meal for a change. But I do, and it is good.

After dinner, we cross the street to an Irish pub where we later meet Molly and Erin and finish out our night.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that every day on the trip, Casey and I ate cheese and potatoes and drank alcohol in some form. It began on the Fourth when we had fries, cheese and crackers and beer at my uncle�s. Usually the potatoes were in fried form, and the alcohol was usually beer, with the exception of sangria and wine at Jim�s party and at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba.

Now that�s vacation eatin�!