Great American Cities

Our summer started off with a visit from Mom and Dad in early June.

We showed them around our apartment


But that doesn't take very long. So we went out in the rain to see Millennium Park.

Fortunately, we have a large collection of umbrellas. Mom thought these were marvelous things. New Hampshire doesn't have much of an umbrella culture; people wear raincoats and drive cars. But umbrellas aren't the only exciting things in Chicago:

We also have public art that lets you make use of umbrellas!

And, of course, the Bean.



That's a tiny Bean in a scale model of the city at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, across the street. The Bean is officially named Cloud Gate but people only call it that if they're being ironic. I also learned from Wikipedia that it is located in the AT&T plaza, between the Chase Promenade and McCormick Tribune Plaza and Ice Rink. As far as I can tell those corporate sponsorships aren't getting much mileage. Does anyone even know they exist? I didn't.



We all knew that the Bean was great for photos, but did you know that you can also shelter from the rain underneath?


I'm guessing that most Chicagoans have never gotten close enough to the Bean to see underneath (because then people would think we were tourists). It's neat! Looking up:


We also found this lovely prairie garden behind the wonderful new Modern Wing of the Art Institute.



Eventually it cleared up, and we headed over to the Blues Festival.



Mmmm, sun. Can you tell I haven't gotten much of it this year?

The next day we went for a walk in Hyde Park to see the historic sites from the World's Columbian Exposition. Actually, there aren't many artifacts left, but there is this replica of a statue.


One of our favorite things to do in Chicago is to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo (free!) and see the monkeys.


One of the chimps figured out that he could pull a tree branch through the cage and eat the leaves.


Monkey see, monkey do...


It was clearly a novelty: most of the chimps tore off big bunches of leaves, ate a few, let the rest drop, and tore off some more. Except one, who hung out underneath and collected them. Not hard to believe that these are our closest ancestors.

A couple of weeks later Jeff and I got to be the ones experiencing a new city, when we went to St. Louis for Melissa and Chris's wedding. We love the Bean, but you've got to give St. Louis props for having its public art visible in almost every view.


The wedding was in an art gallery that used to be a police station, which made for odder things in the backgrounds of pictures. Jeff and I calculated that this was the fifteenth wedding we've attended together, and it definitely had the quirkiest photo situation of them all.

There was this holding cell:

And, at our table, the head of John the Baptist, in his platter phase.

In this representation, St. John has been lured to martyrdom by a saucy hipster librarian.

Much prettier:


Congrats, Melissa and Chris!

We spent the next day checking out St. Louis. If you didn't know, St. Louis is the original home of peanut butter, the ice-cream cone, and Tums. It also features the Anheuser-Busch brewery and a whole lot of red hats. The Cardinals were playing at home when we were there, and literally every conversation we overheard was about baseball. It made us a little nervous.

St. Louis also has a very special kind of pizza.


There's Jeff, wooing his breakfast. Jeff loves St. Louis pizza. Here's the Wikipedia description:

The definitive characteristics of St. Louis-style pizza are a super-thin yeast-less crust, the common (but not mandatory) use of Provel processed cheese, and pizzas cut into squares or rectangles instead of large pie shaped slices. Provel is a trademark for three cheeses fused to form one (provolone, swiss, and white cheddar), used instead of (or, rarely, in addition to) the mozzarella or provolone common to other styles of pizza.

I like this detail:

St. Louis style pizza is unique even when compared to the Chicago-style thin crust pizza in that it is also cut into squares and is referred to as "party cut".

Those three-bite squares do make it easy to have your own little pizza party, even when it's kind of your breakfast.

But then we had to get serious and go learn things about St. Louis, the Arch, and Westward Expansion.


We thought the best part of the Museum of Westward Expansion was the old-timey gift shop. But the Arch is really all it's cracked up to be.

Jeff isn't a very good sport about tourist photos. He blames this on having grown up in a tourist town (though what icon you'd want to pose in front of in Kennebunk, I'm not sure...cutouts of the Bushes?).

I gave up after this one.

Near the Arch is the courthouse where Dred Scott was tried (and let go--St. Louis has the good guys in that story). It's not an actual courthouse anymore, but it has an incredible collection of dioramas.

We learned that in the olden days, there was a lot of: men; drinking on the street; and telling the Native Americans what's what.




Here the Americans are acquiring Missouri and the rest of the Louisiana Purchase from the French, or Spanish. It's kind of confusing. This is the sort of stuff they neglect to teach New England kids (i.e. anything that didn't happen in New England).

The Europeans (that's safe) have twirly mustaches and earrings and military discipline; the Americans are ragtag and dour.

I especially liked these two.


If those people aren't respectable, I don't know what is.

What do you think they would have made of this?


There's Mom and Jenny, marvelling at Times Square. Last weekend the whole family met up in New York--the first time we've all been in one place since Jenny's wedding, nearly 3 years ago!

Unlike a certain other person mentioned in this blog post, my family are very good sports indeed about posing for tourist photos.



In addition to umbrellas, we got to use trains


and dodge traffic


and eat delicious Moroccan food


and see people sing and dance...at the same time


We also got to visit with Aunt Sally, Uncle Doug, and Cousin John, and I was able to squeeze in quick visits with my college friend Nora, as well as Alex (from high school) and his girlfriend Jina. And then, back to Chicago, in time for some urban grilling with Tom and Elizabeth on our rainy 4th of July.

(Note that Jeff is timing the steaks with his smartphone. Not exactly young men and fire...but the steaks were delicious!)

For the rest of our summer travels, we're planning on Ann Arbor sat the end of this month and Maine/New Hampshire at the end of August (wedding #16!). I'll also be spending a lot of time in Schaumburg, but I don't think that counts. Let me know if you need anything from Ikea.