CHITOWN

A WEEKEND IN CHICAGO

Our plan was to board the Empire Builder in Columbus on its way to Chicago. It for years has made a mandatory screeching stop for a fleeting two minutes in this little burb north of Madison. Neither Rick nor I like driving into Chicago. Coming from the north the drive takes about two hours to reach the outer ring but it can take another three hours to tackle the bumper-to-bumper traffic from the northwestern suburbs to the loop.  Then once there you have to contend with parking. Our go to method for getting to the heart of the windy city had been to take a commuter train. On the half-dozen times we've done it we drove to the Milwaukee airport, an hour and fifteen-minutes, and then took the AmTrack commuter train right into Union Station.
This time since Columbus is only a thirty-minute drive from Madison and since the Empire Builder makes that two-minute stop we thought we'd give it a try. The Empire Builder starts its westward journey from Seattle, WA and goes all the way to Chicago. It's a luxury train with sleeping compartments and dining cars and waiters with white gloves.

Columbus is one of those towns that had a heyday about a hundred years ago and then just dropped off the map leaving it a century back in time. Back when train travel was coming into its own Columbus managed to snag the railroad instead of Madison but the train coup didn't help with its financial and business boon.

What it did do was leave it blessed with an early twentieth century charm, a charm strong enough to draw the director, Michael Mann, to use it as his set for the movie Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp.

It also left it with some significant architecture, Columbus' crowning jewel: the Farmers and Merchants Union Bank designed by Louis Sullivan.

Turned out the Empire Builder was going to be our public enemy trying its best to stop us from getting to Chicago.

Unbeknownst to us it is also notoriously late by the time it gets to Columbus, WI.  We found this out about ten-minutes into our drive from Madison. Rick received a text informing us that the train would be approximately two hours late. Now we love antiquing in Columbus but our bags were packed and we were counting on dinner in Chicago, not in the Empire Builder's dining car. We didn't even need to flip a coin. We did a "U-ey" and started heading toward Milwaukee while Rick wrangled his magic over the phone with the ticketing agent getting our tickets changed from the Empire Builder to the commuter. Turns out the luxury liner also comes with a luxury price. We got a huge refund. We made it to Milwaukee with a half-hour to spare and beat the scheduled arrival time of the luxury train into Union Station by a good two and a half hours.

An Uber to my sister's condo on the north side put us to our destination well ahead of schedule and in time for a tour of her new digs, a stroll through Andersonville and dinner at Lady Gregory's.

We hadn't seen my sister's new apartment since she officially moved in earlier the preceding spring. We'd helped her with some of the furnishings and decorating but the bulk of the design was hers. Chicago has its roots well dug into the Arts & Crafts movement. The influence of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie Style are abundantly evident in the windy city.

My sister's apartment shared much of this influence and she played off of it well, mixing it in with a collection of vintage games and international pieces she acquired while teaching in Saudi Arabia and traveling the world.

Lady Gregory's has become her go to local restaurant for a good dinner and it was a great introduction to her Chicago neighborhood for us. It was the quintessential Chicago eatery.

I wanted a lite bite and that's what I had: the best French onion soup with a side of flatbread topped with crispy spinach, goat cheese and bacon while Rick had fish & chips and my sister had her favorite grilled cheese and tomato soup.

On day two we went back to explore the shops in Andersonville. This was essential given the amount of antique window-shopping we had done the night before. These shops are like a magnet for us. No matter how hard we try to resist the pull is overwhelming and sucked us in like a bear to honey.

I walked out of one shop with a pair of lamps for a client back in New York. It's so much fun spending other people's money!

After shopping, food is always our story. When you mix the two it can be dangerous especially after lunch at a great little Mexican restaurant serving a top-notch margarita. I developed a bit of a drunkard's limp after a margarita lunch. I 'm such a light weight.

After the margaritas I had to give up on my no sugar campaign. I made the three of us stop in at this amazing bakery for a cinnamon roll and cappuccino. I have no idea of what Rick and my sister had. I was now on a sugar high

As if that wasn't enough Ebby had made reservations that night at one of her favorites and a Chicago institution, Sun Wah, for their famous Peking Duck.

It's not a very fancy place but it's huge serving between 900 to1100 ducks in any given week. Getting a duck requires you to place an advance order from the "secret menu" . That menu is the only place you'll find the Beijing Duck Dinner. Thankfully my sister knew the secret trick.

The duck isn't just plated and brought to your table. No, the whole carcass is brought to your table and carved in a theatrical display There were a couple of neighboring tables that obviously didn't know about the secret ordering process. Wearing covetous stares they looked on with complete envy. Now all I want to know is where the Sun Wah people keep their duck farm.

On day two I was still trying to digest the duck. We told ourselves: today food was not going to be the focus. This kind of edict never works out. As an attempt at our resolve we headed to the Art Institute to see the Manet show. My sister's membership was going to get us in before the hordes and since you can't take food into the museum, we were counting on the ticket police to be our no food enforcer and give us the once over for contraband delectable.

After the museum we had signed up for a walking tour of some of Chicago's most significant architecture. The meeting place was the Art Institute of Chicago's Annex. These tours are very popular. We shied away from any of the tours that included restaurants or tastings and stuck with inedible concrete and glass.

Once again we thought that if the tour guide kept us moving we wouldn't have a chance to purchase any food along the way. We almost succeeded. Our guide never mentioned this building but the sight of it did make our stomachs do a little flip and that helped to momentarily quell our hunger.

The walk took us along the banks of the Chicago River where you can see a spectrum of architectural styles from the Wrigley Building to Marina City and on to the most recent Trump Tower.

One of my favorite stops on the tour was the post-modern lobby at 77 West Wacker Drive, a building designed by Ricardo of Arquitectura. The way the architect was able to frame an exterior view of an adjoining building to make it look more like a painting than a view through a window was genius and beautiful.

Chicago is a city rich in architecture

Every street is a walk through history. There is so much of significance that its beauty can seem almost ordinary and expected. This couples with a heritage of Nordic cleanliness almost everywhere you go. When you combine the two Chicago rises to one of the world's great cities.

With so much grandeur it can be easy to overlook the details of the city that decorate its exteriors like the jewels in a Tiffany lamp

This beauty extends inside where peacocks parade in a glory of brass filigree

and then returns outside to remind us of Chicago's cultural history in neon and sparkling light.

If your not spinning by now then look up and crane your neck to see the beauty above your head under the spectacular glass ceiling in the Chicago Cultural Center.

We held out for as long as we could before we broke our hunger strike. We popped into the old Marshall Fields and went to the top floor and the Walnut Room where we dove into a plate of grilled naan topped with roasted chicken, butternut squash, gorgonzola and baby arugula then dressed with a maple vinaigrette.

We added a hot plate of their famous buttery garlic bread toasted with a thick layer of Wisconsin Asiago cheese. Beat that! It was well worth breaking our resolve.

We had asked Ebby to pick a top restaurant for dinner on our last night. She did her research and made a reservation at North Pond.

North Pond is architectural the essence of Prairie Style architecture and ambiance. You could sense Frank Lloyd Wright sitting at a table down the aisle from you.
This was definitely the height of nouvelle cuisine. We dined on a rollercoaster of unique flavor combinations under the tutelage of their most knowledgeable server and sommelier.

This was a dinner we were going to take our time experiencing. We all tried to pick different offerings from each course. My sister who eats no meat began with a salad of poached Gulf shrimp with red plum "Pico de Gallo", green tomatoes, hibiscus kettle corn and sprinkled with Chicago cheese popcorn. The problem with this dish it was spread out over a plate that made it impossible to gather a bit of everything into one bite.

I went for a composition created around candied baby beets and golden watermelon with shaved coppa, smoked cotija and pickled peppers with an anise syrup drizzled over the top. This is the kind of dining where I don't have the faintest idea or knowledge of half of the ingredients.

Rick skipped the salad and went straight to the first course with a plate slashed with Piperade-raisin jam, shards of Guanciale bacon and topped with a soft-boiled egg that spilled its runny yolk throughout the dish once it broke open and rolled over the rest of the dish. This was definitely one of the better concoctions. Like a trained truffle pig or dog Rick can always root out the best dishes on a menu!

Our main courses were just as fascinating and complex as the salads and first courses. From a slow-roasted Coho salmon filet served with charred sweet corn, a popcorn-crusted frog leg, early peaches, arugula, capers and corn "flakes". I dare you to try and describe how all of that tastes in one mouthful.

Rick is the only one who ventured into the meat category with grilled pork tenderloins and crisp rillettes laid on a smear of cherry jam. Then added to the plate was some shitake mushrooms, black garlic "Chicherron" with a couple cherry cola gumdrops. The tenderloins were delicious.

I went for the tilefish and nectarines. The fish and fruit was accompanied by Cavolo Nero(those were those little black things), some shishito peppers, sourdough beans, pickled onion and sprinkled with an herb crumb. I ate it but I can't say I was thrilled

We should have called it quits but since from the start we had wanted to experience the entire menu we did dessert. I love figs so when I saw them paired with honey I felt I'd be leaving on a comfy note. Once again the plate was way more complicated than it needed to be. The figs were roasted in balsamic vinegar and the honey came in the form of gelee on top of a yogurt panna cotta. Added to this was a scoop of plum sorbet, a rose cloud and a sugar nest crown.

Rick chose a slow-roasted peach served with a cinnamon-orange brioche pudding and olive oil ice cream that tasted just like it sounds.

All I wanted after that was a slice of Chicago style pan pizza. The dinner was a bit pretentious but the setting was worth it and so was the company.
Chicago will always be a refuge for us, now more than ever, since my sister has given us an open invitation for whenever we need an energy boost. It is a beautiful city. It's a world-class destination and the perfect escape for a long weekend holiday.

A BEE STORY

YARD WORK IS NOT FOR SISSIES

She tried her best. The front garden looked well watered but in need of a major weeding and the backyard was well on its way to becoming a meadow and not a very pretty one. Our daughter tried her best to keep the weeds under control while we were gone but the weeds won out.
The weed invasion didn't seem to bother the bees. The wildness of the Russian sage was a feast of sweet nectar for the yellow jackets and honeybees. Not able to resist the need to weed after I got back to Madison from New York I changed into a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeve tee. I went searching for my goatskin gardening gloves and the little spade we keep hanging on a peg in the snug.  I pulled and dug out anything that didn't look as if it would ever flower. I'm no gardener, that's Rick's domain along with the kitchen.  In fact, gardening is one of those tasks I look at like cleaning out a clogged drain in the tub or changing a flat tire. By the time I finished weeding the front garden running the length our lawn I'd filled two thirty-three gallon lawn bags with the weeds and possibly legitimate plants I managed to either pull or dig out. I did all I could. The backyard was going to have to wait until the next day.

The backyard was much different than the front. Emmy had promised to help but she's not an early riser. Around ten after she had rolled out and found another pair of gloves we both went out to tackle the patio. Our back patio has a pea gravel surface laid on top of a plastic barrier that is supposed to keep the weeds out. Well it sort of works but after almost a complete summer of neglect it needed some serious attention.  Emmy and I filled another set of thirty-three gallon lawn debris bags. That meant I'd now accumulated four thirty-three gallon bags of lawn refuse and no real plan as to what to do with it.
The four thirty-three gallon black bags weren't going to fit in our trash can and I don't think you're supposed to put lawn and garden debris in the trash anyway. I did ask our neighbor and he agreed it wasn't a great idea. My civic duty and the fear the environmental police may catch me kicked in telling me I should put it all in the boot of our car and take it to the recycling station. Does anyone know how heavy a thirty-three gallon bag stuffed with weeds is? They're really heavy. I dragged the two bags from the backyard paving a lane of dead grass all the way to the driveway and dumped them next to the other two bags from the front yard.

That's when I spotted the two deteriorating bags Rick* had stashed next to our trash shed. These bags represented an unenthusiastic attempt at composting begun almost two years ago. I figured if I was willing to cart four hefty bags to the recycling center I could handle these two little decomposing bags as well. Rick was just going to have to give up in the compositing venture.
*EDITOR'S NOTE: This Rick guy seems to be a real piece of work!

I went back into the garage to pull out another thirty-three gallon bag to throw those composting bags into. They appeared to be decomposing too and they looked nasty. I picked up the first bag that oozed some black slim out of the holes in its bottom but I got it into the clean bag one handed while my other hand held my nose. Rotting refuse has a very unpleasant smell.
Then I went to pick up the second bag. Big mistake and I mean BIG mistake!  A swarm of bees said, "You aren't messing with us today" and the attack was on. I dropped the bag and started swatting and bringing back the Watusi as I jumped and flailed.
Those bees made me dance like it was 1976 at Studio 54. These bees were mad and they were ugly and they wanted a piece of me. You know you can't just brush them off once they've stuck their little venom filled stingers in you. You have to grab their furry bodies and pull them off with a twist. It's as painful as it sounds and just as disgusting.  Yet I have to give it to them; they're willing to die for the preservation of their hive.
After I recovered from the shock of my burning welts and moved sufficiently far enough to no longer be a threat to them I had to contemplate my next move.
Were these angry marauders honeybees and if they were was I willing to kill them? Who had ever heard of honeybees building a hive in a garbage bag? Honeybees are nearing extinction status. Would I be called a pollinator murderer if I brought out the Raid and poisoned them with chemicals? Could I forgive and forget and let them live in my rotting decomposing black trash bag I'd inadvertently left for them? What kind of slumlord would I be? The choice between murdered and slumlord seemed like a losing proposition in either direction.
Then it hit me. Down the street is a neighbor who raises honeybees. I'd never meet him or bought his honey but I figured Google wasn't going to come to my rescue. I walked down the street rubbing my arms where the burning was intensifying and knocked on his door. Mike had one of those signs in his front yard saying everyone was welcome in our neighborhood in English, Spanish and Arabic. I hoped it was a good sign, good enough that he'd more likely welcome me than shoot me.
It took a while for the door to swing open but when it did I started the conversation - rapid fire.
"I'm your neighbor. I live down the block. I was just weeding. I had four big black bags of weeds. Then there were bees, hundreds of them pouring out of a bag. I got stung. There were bees in a bag and they came after me. I got stung. They were mad. Are they honeybees? Should I kill them? Am I destroying the environment? What should I do? Do you sell your honey?"
"Lets have a look" and he gently pushed me aside, closed his door behind him and headed off in the direction I had indicated as the path back to my house.

When we got there he cavalierly sauntered right into the center of the swarm, closer than I could get without some liquid fear dripping down my leg, and assessed the situation.
"Let me get my gear and I'll be back"
"Okay" was about as much as I could muster as a response.
In fifteen minutes I could see him walking back pulling a wagon loaded with beekeeper's equipment. He had a machine the said would attract and capture a swarm of bees and a bag containing what looked like a HAZMAT suit.
There's so much to learn about bees and beekeeping. Mike does it for the joy of it. The money he makes from the sale of his honey barely allows him to break even. Only so many of his hives will survive a Wisconsin winter and replacing them costs upwards of a hundred and fifty dollars a swarm. The amazing fact to me was he buys new swarms off the internet. Kudos to the delivery people willing to pickup and carry boxes that buzz.

Mike donned his beekeeping outfit in the driveway. First pulling the white jump suit over his street clothes and securing the bottoms around his boots. Next he placed the pith helmet with a netting veil over his head and snapped it to the collar of the jump suit. The last thing was to slide his hands into the thick leather gIoves. This is when I became aware of the neighbors peeking through their securely locked windows at the spectacle that was taking place in my driveway. I feared they might be postulating I could be harboring radioactive materials in my garage requiring the city to bring in their hazardous materials team to clean up a dangerous mess.
The real task was for Mike to figure out if the hive was a honeybee hive or something else. The fact that these bees had taken to establish their home in a composting garbage bag made Mike think these intruders might be some other kind of bee. It would be the determining factor to whether he would try to capture them or kill them. There are 20,000 varieties of bees so the possibilities were high that this swarm might be something other than the kind of bees that were going to be honey makers. Turns out not all bees are pollinators.
Here's where the spectacle of bee identification became more of a spectator sport for the curious neighbors as Mike began a dance of swatting and trying to capture one of the bees A dead bee in the hand would be the best way for him to identify them as the good kind of bee or the bad kind. Once he crushed a lone drone he came over to me to show me the harmless little furry insect his stinger no longer a weapon to be feared.

"These bees aren't going to be producing any honey, they're ground nesting bees and they are not going to pollenate or save the planet." He went back into the angry swarm and pulled out a birthing comb from the bag of slime, along with a platoon of macho males trying one last attempt as saving their hive. I cowered. Mike did a victory laugh and asked me to get a couple more lawn bags.
After he had disposed of the rotting bags inside the clean bags he tied the bag shut as he issued his last directive, "Dump them in the trash, that should kill them then squirt a little Raid on the stragglers to finish off the rest".

Heroes come in many forms. Mine wore a funky suit making him appear both angelic and menacing. He loaded up his bee capturing gear onto his wagon and without taking off his suit rolled back home a vision that scared the bejesus out of all the little kids in the neighborhood who were sure we'd been invaded by aliens.

FINAL CALL

NOTES FROM A TRIP WELL DONE

The plane has left the runway. We've now flown back, fallen into a way too rigorous work schedule and still wake up forgetting where we are as we look for the cappuccino struggling to get the barista to understand what zucchero and crema mean.
It's always a good thing to do a recap after a big vacation to remind
yourself of what you want to remember and then what you need to remember but know you'll forget on your next adventure if you don't write it down.

Things like how to pack. When I got home I restuffed my drawers with the seven t-shirts I never wore and the eight pairs of socks I never unfolded although they did help to keep my shoes from losing their shape in my suitcase.

Speaking of shoes, I learned the importance of a comfortable pair and how hard I am on them. My favorite travel shoes lived a good life and died in the service of my feet's salvation with holes in the soles and liners that gave out halfway through Barcelona. On the last day I kissed them good-bye and left them under the bed in Lisbon. I couldn't bear to put them in the trash. I had to leave the burial to someone else.

I realized that after two weeks on the road underwear can stand the two-day test and the same goes for showering.

We now know to remember to expect the unexpected. We fell in love with Bilbao and that was unexpected. We only went to see the Guggenheim. I had assumed that Bilbao was going to be an industrial town and a one trick pony ... so wrong!  It was filled with gorgeous architecture from the art nouveau and art deco periods, a beautiful riverfront and a whole lot of new construction by an array of Starchitects.

We decided that if we take TAP Airlines again and take advantage of their stopover policy it wouldn't be in Lisbon. We lived through New York in the eighties and we don't need to do it again.

We also found out that as you age it's important to stay at nice hotels. When we were young and had the energy of long distance runners hotels didn't matter that much. They were just a place to lay your head and stash your backpack. We now need more and more down time and that isn't going to happen at a youth hostel. We now need a pool, room service and a wait staff with a "peal me a grape" attitude.

Breakfast was never a big thing for us when we traveled. We used to take that time dedicated to eating for our last forty winks before we hit the shops and a few museums. Now I need the prunes and Rick needs the cheese so breakfast has become more of a necessity than a luxury.

Never, and I mean never, ask for a doggie bag. It's just not good manners in Europe and I have no idea why, all I know is that it is de rigueur.

Write this one down, learn the trick of the Star Alliance Lounge. We weren't expecting a delay and especially not one that would last as long as it did with our flight from Rome to Lisbon. For the price of a cheap hotel with Star Alliance Lounges you get the luxury of a five star relais. What would you rather do, sit out in the overcrowded waiting area in an uncomfortable seat or relax in a lounge with sleep rooms, a quiet zone, a free buffet with delicious hot and cold repasts and an open liquor and wine bar? You decide.

Talk to anyone you can. That's how we met Jim and Holly in the pool at our hotel in Barcelona, teachers from Boston on their first trip together, the British couple in the suite next to us in Lisbon who ended up at the same fish restaurant and had the same experience with the calamari, Alessandro, our mixologist and heart throb (Emmy's included) in Rome, or our bartender in the airport lounge in Rome who regaled us with stories about all his Brazilian boyfriends.  It doesn't take much, a hello usually does it. Juan from Cuba tried it on me in Bilbao and I was very flattered!
*EDITOR'S NOTE: Hey watch it Juan!!!

When you find yourself in trouble and things are beginning to look bleak remember the world is usually there to help you. When Rick's glasses broke and our trip looked as if it might be headed for disaster there was a kind man down an unmarked alley that was there to help us out without question or the need of any reward more than knowing he was doing the right thing.

Posting our trip as a blog and on Instagram has gotten us so much positive feedback we can't thank everyone enough for taking the time to survive our
high-tech slide show complete with lengthy running dialogues that seemed to have amused many of you.  It's also given us a memory log so when we're
too senile and try to fudge our history there's going to be a written record to refute any wild and outrageous tales!

But best of all go and live in a place that's totally new, a little scary and where no one you may meet may speak your language. That's what happened to us in Italy. It's now been twenty years since we first decided to go to Fattoria Armena because our daughter was such an animal lover. The farm with its Noah's Ark of a menagerie looked like something she'd enjoy. We had no idea that we'd be returning time and time again. Who knows why a Dutch family would also decide to show up on our second trip with three children close in age to our daughter. Who could have predicted that these kids would form a bond along with the Saracini's two sons that has lasted all these twenty years? The Saracini's are now family as are Laura, Erik and the Vermeer kids.

It may have been an accident or it may have been ordained, but if you don't travel, if you don't make the effort to introduce yourself or say hello, if you shroud yourself in fear of people who may seem different than you then you'll never know the greatness of our world." In a world where you can be anything - be kind." And travel!