Okay, we got here yesterday and had a fabulous day. We're heading out very early this morning (8:30) and hopefully we'll get back late, but tomorrow or Monday I should be able to update this for us...
Chicago - what a town! We are staying at the closest RV park to Chicago, which is about 35 miles southeast, near Joliet (yes the prison town), which puts us an hour away from downtown by train, but the train station is only a mile from here, an easy drive, and the rate is amazing on weekends. It costs $5 for a weekend pass, which allows an adult to ride the trains as much as you want all weekend long. Katie is free. The parking lot costs only $1 a day. Then, once you arrive, there are free trolleys leaving from the train station, that can take you to major tourist stops. It's the best deal we've ever seen.
We headed to Navy Pier, a circa-1916 tourist stop on Lake Michigan. It has a small amusement park with a huge ferris wheel, lots of space for events, a couple museums, lots of restaurants, a nice breeze, and live music. We took Katie to the amusement park:
The reason we are in Chicago at this time is that our good friends Mark and Karen Olson are flying to Dublin, and had a stopover in Chicago, so they suggested we all meet up here. They arrived tonight and we met them in front of their hotel near the riverfront.
After dinner, Mark and Karen showed us their tiny hotel room and then walked us back to the train station. Along the way, we saw some of the beautiful architecture in downtown Chicago. Here is the top of the Chicago Public Libray:
We didn't have a map, and so we barely missed our 8:45pm train, so we walked to a nearby Italian restaurant (below), made plans for Sunday, had drinks and waited for the 10:55(ugh) train:
We got back just after midnight (very late for me).
Sunday, June 19 (Father's Day)
Mark wanted to catch the 8:45am train, so we got up at 7:30am. I'll be tired today, but we have a fun, full day ahead. We met Mark and Karen at the Art Institute of Chicago, a sprawling art museum built in the 1890s. Here is one of the lions out front:
Katie was jumping up and down by the lion, when we saw Mark and Karen walking down the street, and she fell into the bushes, about a four foot drop. Not hurt at all, but scared, and her TootsiePop was coated in greenery (Mark was a sweetie and washed it up for her).
The Institute had so many great works of art; here are a few you probably recognize:
The last one is a detail of the painting above it, Sunday Afternoon in the Park with George. It is made up of lots and lots of dots, which look like dots when you get close, then blend into pretty smoothness when you backup. The painting is probably 5 feet tall and 8 feet wide.
Katie and I found the kids area and she made her own art gallery out of a box and pictures. And before we left, I peeked into the miniatures gallery, which had dozens of rooms like this one, which is about two feet across and a foot tall, and is titled "Georgia Double Parlor, 1850."
After the museum, we walked to the Magnificent Mile, where you can shop at Tiffany's, Saks, Neiman Marcus, or the huge (4-story) American Girl store. On the way, we passed the biggest McDonald's I've ever seen:
The American Girl store was a required stop because Karen's neice has an American Girl doll and asked for a beach outfit and a cat. You can buy hundreds of outfits for your doll at this store (your doll is created to match your daughter's skin, hair and eye color and her hair length and style too). Then you can buy matching outfits for your daughter and her doll. Talk about pricey! The dolls are $85 and the doll outfits start at $20 apiece. But it was fascinating seeing all the stuff, and they had a live American Girl theater and a fancy restaurant where you and your daughter can eat, as well as a coat check (you know it's expensive when there's a coat check), etc. Katie enjoyed it very much. Here is one of the corners of one room on one floor:
Two black women were styling dolls' hairdos when we were there, and the play was going on too. amazing...
Next we walked over to the Hancock Building:
one of the tallest in Chicago, with a fabulous view from its observation deck. Here are Karen and Katie at the bottom:
I loved seeing a pool at the top of a high rise, way below us:
There were people in it--it was a very pretty day.
There were spots where you could take funny pictures. Here is one, of our friend Mark Olson:
And a couple of Mark and Katie:
Karen led us to a fabulous pizza place she knew of.
Katie was pooped from sightseeing. The pizza takes 45 minutes to cook, so we let her sleep until it arrived:
The place is Gino's East, and the pizza was really great, and the walls really interesting: every inch was covered with graffiti:
my contribution (circled above) reads: Mark, Karen, Kim, Mark and Katie Father's Day 2005.
Katie signed the wall and then her chair. Mark signed a wall:
After lunch: more walking. Katie took this one of me and Karen along the way:
Karen is smiling despite having a nasty blister forming on her foot. We walked to a playground for Katie, then took her to a beach near Navy Pier, where she got soaked in the waves, then walked down to Millenium Park, a really neat spot for kids to play:
Okay, it is neat for grownups too. The water drips slides away from the middle and into a crack that runs around the center, so it keeps quite neat: parents can keep dry if they want to. The faces are quite calming, once you get used to the idea of 100-foot faces (they change after a minute or so).
We had to hurry through dinner to make our train (whew, I was tired of walking after that), but we caught the 8:45 and got back to the RV by 10pm. Then we gave Mark his Father's Day present (we'd gotten up so early I had forgotten to give it to him this morning--bad mommy!).
Monday, June 20
Today we slept in a little (8am) and felt a little groggy all day--we've been getting up early a lot lately, and it's catching up with us. Mark washed the RV's winshield (it looks fabulous now) and worked, and I did laundry, played with Katie, and took her to the nearby public library, a brand new, gorgeous building. Tomorrow, Katie and I might sightsee, then my Mom arrives tomorrow night, and we'll see her on Wednesday.
Tuesday, June 21
Katie and I went on a quest to find candy today. I just finished reading Candy Freak by Steve Almond (his real name). He is a teacher and self-confessed candy freak since childhood who gets to tour a bunch of small regional candybar makers (if you're on the west coast, the guys who make Abba Zabba and Big Hunk, for instance) and hear their woes: $20,000 fees per supermarket to stock one candy bar (such as Abba Zabba)! The little guys can't afford "slotting fees" like that, and that is why we don't see them in big supermarket chains anymore--they have to sell their stuff to discount chains or corner drug stores or anyone who will still take them, and often only in a region close to where they manufacture. So, apparently, one can travel around the country and find candy bars that can't be gotten back home. This sounded like a challenge to me!
I saw a candy store in the 50 Places to Take Kids in Chicago book. It is called "Margie's Candies" and has been around for 40 years or so, and I thought it sounded like a good candidate, so Katie and I headed out to find it. Mark planned to meet up with us afterward, and head out to my mom's hotel for dinner with her.
Here is Katie, all dressed up to see Grandma later, on the train with me (and her monkey):
Here are the pictures of Margie's:
It only sold homemade chocolates (no candy bars) and ice cream. But to say only is to do them an injustice--they have a fold-out menu of all the ice cream sundaes they make. Katie had her first ice cream sundae (mint chocolate chip with chocolate sauce), and I had my--100th?
After Margie's, Katie and I had a couple hours to kill before meeting my mom, so I asked the owner (I think he was the owner--he was the old man behind the cash register at least) what there was to do in his neighborhood (it looked pretty marginal--almost scary). He suggested we head over to a nearby thrift shop. He said it was really big and there were good things to buy. It was only a couple blocks away, and there was really nothing else to do, so we headed over. Oh my gosh what a place! It was enormous and the deals were too. The book section had so many great books for sale, especially for Katie. Between she and I, we picked up well over a dozen for her and probably half a dozen for me, so I had to pare down (we had three train rides ahead of us that afternoon/evening). I think we got it down to about a dozen total books, including many hardcovers, and a pair of yellow glitter shoes for Katie (they also had red ruby slipper ones, but not small enough for her) as well. The time flew by, and soon it was time to go see Grandma.
Mark met us by taking a couple trains to where we were, and we took another train to O'Hare and caught the hotel shuttle to her hotel. whew! We didn't have long to spend before having to reverse the process to get home by midnight, but it was fun visiting and having dinner with her. We'll see her again throughout the week; she leaves on Sunday.
Mom gave me my own copy of her book, and I'm so happy for her, now that it is finally done. She said that the story continues, and she wishes she could get the latest stuff in there too. Maybe there will be a volume II someday?
Wednesday, June 22
My mom took the Blue Line into the city from O'Hare, and we (Katie and I) took our Rock Island Line (now the old rail lines, Rock Island, Santa Fe, etc. are all called the Metra) to downtown and met Mom right at her stop. We just missed the hourly free trolley to Navy Pier, so we took a taxi instead, another first for Katie. It was a bouncy ride (aren't they all?):
At Navy Pier, we rode the ferris wheel with Grandma, to show her the city first thing.
Her father was born here, and grew up in the Melrose Park suburb. When Mom was a kid, her family would pile into their car every summer and drive from nice cool San Francisco up here to sweltering Chicago to visit her grandparents and cousins. I wondered if we'd get a chance to see his old place, but she didn't know the address, and it was way out in the suburbs, not near the train lines.
There is a stained glass museum at Navy Pier, showing hundreds of amazing stained glass, much of it done by Tiffany, some of it modern, and most of it historic to Chicago's old mansions and stores. This pair, by Tiffany, I decided I wanted in my home someday:
Our true destination (in Katie's eyes) was the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier. It really was a good one, and one room Katie really liked was the construction room, where you could use bolts and nuts and pegboard to build anything you like. Here is Mom helping out:
Other fun areas included a huge chess game (pieces two feet tall) to play, a dinosaur dig that the kids could help with (brushing and digging the recycled rubber "dirt" away to reveal the skeleton), and a really cool exhibit that allowed you to look at a screen, which took a picture of your face, and then it projected your picture onto a big screen where you were a butterfly or a bee or something. Here is Katie as the butterfly on the left (it's hard to see her face, I know):
The coolest part is that you could use a stick control with your bug on it to move yourself around on the screen (in 3 dimensions--you could bring it close or far, up or down, left or right) in relation to the other bugs and the Chicago backdrops, which changed frequently.
After a full day of playing, we left Grandma and came back to the RV, had dinner and relaxed with Mark. His plan was to go to the Museum of Science and Industry with us all tomorrow.
I headed out for the grocery store after dinner, and while I was gone, Mark hit his little toe against one of the many easy places to catch it in the RV, and dislocated or broke it. I got home about a minute after that happened. Mark had already pushed it back into place and was loudly saying that this meant no running for weeks and no walking around for awhile (so no museum tomorrow). He didn't want to go to a hospital, so I called my mom for nursing advice, taped it up and put ice on it...and of course Katie wanted her toe to be taped up like Daddy's:
Thursday, June 23
Mark's black & blue toe wasn't as bad as he expected this morning (what a trooper!), so he donned some Birkenstocks and we headed out for the Museum of Science and Industry today. Once again, we met Mom where the blue line and the Rock Island line meet, then walked over to the Electric Line and took that south to the old museum. Mom remembered coming as a kid, and back then it was free to get in (up until just a few years ago it was free, apparently). What she remembered best as a kid was a giant heart that you could walk through.
It cost $100 to get us all in (thank you so much, Mom!) these days, and that didn't even get us into the submarine exhibit that Mark wanted to tour (an old U-boat I think), but it did include an IMAX movie and, best of all, entrance to the Body Worlds exhibit, which is a lot of cadavers and body parts that have been injected with a plastic to preserve the muscles and other organs, and then are displayed with some muscles flayed or missing, to show what is underneath--it probably sounds gruesome or strange, but it is fascinating to see. You may have heard about it--it's been a controversy ever since the guy created it a few years back. I think every medical student should get a chance to see it--you can really learn a lot from it. And, naturally they wouldn't let me take any pictures at all so I can't show you what it's like...but here's the link to the museum, if you want to see a little about it: MSI Chicago.
We spent the whole day at the museum and it was really interesting, and we didn't see it all (missed the chick hatchery, for instance). We were looking around to see if the big heart was still there from my mom's childhood, when a docent said "museum closing in five minutes." We thought it was open another three hours, so that came as a surprise, but we thought we were close to the heart, so we raced to where it might be, and:
it was there!! Mom was charmed that it was just like she remembered it. I was so glad we found it. We left the museum and walked back toward the train station. It was terribly hot outside and we were tempted to buy ice cream for dinner, but we decided to check out the eateries near the train station, which is also near the University of Chicago. We stopped at a little Italian place and I had a great Chicago pesto pan pizza and my mom had the best curried chicken salad I've tasted in a long time. We took the train back into town and it was still light out (and hot), so Mark and I and Katie walked back to Millenium Park and she played until our Rock Island train was gonna come. Here is the final shot of the day:
Friday, June 24
Mark offered to let Katie play at the RV today while he works, and Mom and I could have a day together. Have I mentioned that this guy is truly wonderful? So I took the train in, and so did she, and we met and went to the Art Institute (which I'd seen some of with Mark and Karen and Mark Olson last weekend, but mostly I'd been with Katie in the kiddie area). It was amazing--we spent probably five hours there and saw maybe 2/3 of what is there. Here are some kids drawing Degas' ballerina (I showed a picture of her earlier in this blog entry):
I particularly liked what this one girl was doing. I tried getting a surreptitious picture; she was trying to draw it without sketching first, just drawing every little curve she saw. It was looking good I thought:
I enjoyed the modern American art rooms a lot. Here is the hugest Andy Warhol I've ever seen (Chairman Mao I believe):
And an old joke that Mom and I both liked:
Mom took me to lunch at the wonderful garden restaurant in the middle of the art institute, and we even had a glass of wine (we shared a bottle of Van Duzen pinot noir, a wine which Mark and I had actually sampled back in Oregon at the winery--it was amazing then and just as good now) with lunch. After seeing as much as our brains could take in, we walked through Millenium Park and over to the Taste of Chicago, which is going on until July 4, and is the biggest annual event in the city. It draws over 2 million people and is supposed to be quite yummy. You buy tickets and then there are hundreds of Chicago restaurants you can buy tastes or entrees from, as well as free concerts and a carnival and stuff. It was horrendously hot; here is one kid trying to cool off:
We used up our tickets quickly on ice cream tastes and water, and were still too hot so we sought some shade. There was one pavillion for cooking shows. Can you read the words on this woman's shirt who was just in front of us, also enjoying the shade?
I guess the Taste attracts all types.
Well we decided to leave the oven and go check out the old library (I put a picture up earlier in the blog--it has the cool green metal roof with gargoyles or something--looks like it's out of Ghostbusters) on the way back to the trains. I hoped it was pretty and air conditioned, but it turned out to be something else: closed at 5pm. We arrived at 4:59, and they had locked the doors early. Oh well. It was a fun day nonetheless. And on the train ride home, I discovered that on Friday afternoons, the trains have a bar on board, and it was a real rolling party all the way home (I abstained--didn't think Mark would appreciate picking me up soused at the station).
Katie took this picture of us back at the RV:
Saturday, June 25
Today Mark is working, so Katie and I drove up to Grandma's hotel (in the car this time, to avoid the two to three-hour commute on trains and the shuttle). Doing so meant driving north from our campsite on Hwy 45, an old north-south suburbian route west of Chicago. It goes straight to O'Hare from here, and along the way passes by no other than my grandfather's stomping grounds, Melrose Park. I was kinda excited to see it. Also, since it was a Saturday, I kept my eye open for garage sales. And we found one, in a very pretty 1920s neighborhood called La Grange. Katie picked out a drawing toy and I got an old copy of Stalking the Wild Asparagus about finding wild foods in nature. No sooner did we get back on Hwy 45 but there was an accident up ahead. I wish I'd had my camera out, because it was almost unbelievable: a car had gone off the road and crashed into one of the 1920s stucco houses lining the highway, and it had hit so hard that the entire front was accordioned in. But the odd part was that apparently it had swung after or during the crash, so that it came to rest parallel to the highway and wedged between the house and the house next to it! The driver was gone, but emergency folks were milling about (perhaps taking pictures).
As we approached Melrose Place, I hoped that the homes would be visible so I could imagine my grandpa in front of his brownstone, and maybe snap some shots for Mom to see, but alas, it was all old crumbling muffler shops and discount stores as far as I could see. The heart of Melrose isn't on 45, and I briefly considered driving off the highway and trying to get to the real neighborhood, but we were taking a long enough time getting to Grandma as it was (it was a 90-minute drive to get to her).
Grandma's hotel has a swimming pool, so we attempted to beat the heat (it was another scorcher of a day) and then help her with some projects. I didn't take any pool pictures, but it was wonderful: we were the only ones swimming and the sun went behind some clouds so it didn't fry us, and the water was amazing. After swimming, Katie got to have the first bubblebath since Christmas (that was at another hotel room of Grandma's, in St. Augustine). I'm almost compelled to show pictures of what we do each day; here's today's picture:
I had a half-hour shower myself (god it felt great to be in a real shower and not worry about using up all the hot water) and we went out for really really good Mexican food (there's a big Latino population in Chicago, surprisingly). We watched Babe, Pig in the City with Mom (she once had a VCR with the original Babe stuck inside it, and never got tired of the movie) and then I made a little spreadsheet for her to keep track of her book sales (she's going to various military events and talking about her book and selling copies to interested folks). It was a really wonderful day. I loved lounging with Mom in the pool, and Katie enjoyed getting Grandma involved in playing "babies" with her.
We said goodbye to Grandma and finally left. She is leaving tomorrow morning and we won't see her again on this trip, I suppose.
Sunday, June 26
I can't believe we've been here over a week. Boy the time goes fast when we're having fun. Today is another of those laundry-and-groceries-and-website days for me, and Mark is working again. He is trying to finish his project by the 4th of July, and I hope he can, so he can spend more time seeing stuff with us.
It is another unseasonably hot day today. We somehow went straight from winter to summer this year. I've decided to eat nothing but cold foods today, and we'll make smoothies for dinner. And tomorrow we leave for Michigan: we'll go to Holland, MI first, home of a big tulip festival (no chance of tulips in this weather), and then head up the coast after that.
I headed out for laundry and found the old part of Tinley Park. It's small but trying to hold on to its charm, and has a beautiful train station (in stone, 1910-style, but maybe brand new). Across from the train station is a pizza place with a bench in front, one of many decorated benches around town. Each picks a different movie as its theme. Here is a parting shot of Chicago:
