Things to do at Navy Pier and the Museum Campus

This stretch of the lakefront covers two separate destinations. Navy Pier, east of Streeterville, is free to enter and built around a Ferris wheel, restaurants and shows, roughly a 15 to 20 minute walk or short bus ride from the Loop.

The Museum Campus, south of Grant Park near Soldier Field, groups the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium, each with its own separate admission, none of them free. The Red Line to Roosevelt gets you within walking distance, or a free trolley runs seasonally between the station and the museums.

Lake Michigan is fresh water, not the ocean, and the nearby beaches are staffed only from late May to early September; outside that window, swimming is unsupervised.