Cold War

Of the three episodes that have aired so far in this back half of the season I think this has been my favorite. It was a nice return to a classic monster of the week episode. Last week may have technically been monster of the week, but it was very arc heavy, what with Clara's back story and the Doctor questioning who she was. This week on the other hand was a great stand alone.

Spoilers from here on in.

The Rings of Akhaten

Right. So. I don't know guys. This wasn't a bad episode. It just wasn't great. Honestly I think the main issue was the pacing. This episode felt very slow. It was a very different format from normal episodes, which normally I like when shows do. This episode though, not so much. I liked the story we got at the beginning, and the number of aliens was cool to see. There was just a lot that I feel like didn't make sense, even for Doctor Who.

Like the who "objects of sentiment" as currency. Say I pay for something with a necklace that means a lot to me. The person I gave it to won't have any emotional attachment to it. Can they still use it as currency? I just didn't get it.

Also, I realize that Clara said the TARDIS didn't like her. At first I thought this explained why at first, the song wasn't being translated, but later was made up of words, it took a while for the translation matrix to kick in. But Clara had a conversation with the little girl before the song started making sense so I don't know what was going on there.

Maybe on rewatch I'll like it more because I'll know what to expect from the episode.

A Technical Success

On Saturday, a group of my friends and I set out to visit Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. We hopped on the "L" (El?) and went went south, departing the El ("L"?) at the Roosevelt Red Line stop around noon, all of us hungry for lunch. We walked around a little and finally came across "The Artist's Cafe".

This was an awesome choice for lunch. First of all, as soon as we walked in, the hostess thanked us for choosing to eat with them. Sincerely thanked us. Over the 30-45 minutes we were there, she thanked us four times. They happily rearranged some tables to accommodate our group of six, and to food was amazing. I got a grilled cheese that came with three different kinds of cheeses.

Mozzarella, Cheddar, and Goat Cheese, with Pesto

If you are in the area, I highly recommend it!

So, happily full of food, we struck off towards the Shedd. After a short(ish) walk we spotted it!

The Shedd!

 Then we spotted the line.

This wasn't even half the line. It went on, and on and on.

So we decided not to go to the Shedd. We considered the Field museum, but even though the line was short, their ticket price was three times more than that of the Shedd.

The Field Museum

Instead we went for a very windy walk around the Shedd, and the Adler Planetarium to a nearby beach, as it was a warm(ish) day.

Chicago skyline with a bit of the Shedd

Adler Planetarium

Beach. 

In a not-so-shocking turn of events, despite the nice weather the beach was very empty. In an actually shocking turn of events, I cut my foot on a stick in the sand.

I didn't say I cut it a lot. 

After a while at the beach we headed off. The line to Shedd had diminished, so we had hopes of being able to enter after all. These hopes were dashed when an aquarium worker told us they had lost power and closed the aquarium. Some of us stopped to take a picture with the horse statues nearby before heading off to our next location.

I'm the one in yellow.

Our next stop was *drumroll*

The Bean! Okay, technically it's called "Cloud Gate" but come on, it's a giant bean. I'd wanted to visit the Bean since I got to Chicago and I finally did.

Proof!

After a little while chilling in the park with the Bean we headed off to our final destination, the Lincoln Park Zoo!

We saw a jaguar.

 And we saw swans.

And a beaver.

And a sloth.

And finally, making our trip to the aquarium a technical success

we saw fish.

The Bells of St. John

DOCTOR WHO IS BACK!!!!! That needs to be emphasized.

As always, SPOILERS are below.