Having spent a lovely Sunday night hanging out with Luna and Wolfgang and a digital representation of Gabriel Iglesias, and having had a lovely Monday morning eating french toast and talking about life with Luna, I got back on the road toward Chicago.
Anyone who didn't grow up in the Chicago area (like me), can we just have a moment of solidarity for the people who have to make that commute every day?
Okay now let's have a longer moment of solidarity for the people who have to make that commute once in a while, who aren't from the area, and don't drive like maniacs out of force of habit. Because that was me on Monday. (And again Tuesday, but that wasn't really supposed to happen.)
I really like Chicago, though, every aspect but the car traffic. The buildings are gorgeous and awesome, and Millennium Park is super super cool.
There was really only one reason I stopped by Chicago on Monday, instead of doing the straight diagonal from Rockford to Milwaukee, and that was the Chicago Cultural Center. If you are ever in that part of Chicago, go into that building.
It's probably one of the most ornate and beautiful buildings I've ever been in, and that was only for 10 minutes this one time when Aaron and I were wandering around Millennium Park before a Great Big Sea concert. Just from a few minutes of looking around in wonderment and realizing that every inch of this place is beautiful I knew I wanted to come back and actually spend some time in there with a camera.
I didn't quite plan to be there on Labor Day, when (as all city/government buildings) the Cultural Center would be closed, but there you go.
Here's a picture of the arch over the front door, which was all I could get to.
(That pigeon, incidentally, was completely awesome.)
"Screw you guys I'm a pigeon." - that pigeon
Also, speaking of beautiful government buildings, have some pictures of the side of the Chicago Public Library.
Yes, that's the side. I didn't even go around the front, but I assume it's more of the same: awesome ironwork owls holding books over your head like avenging angels.
And speaking of Millennium Park . . .
I wandered around the park for a while, enjoying the oppressive humidity and nice enough temperature. There were some really neat street performers around – two women played Bach violin doubles twenty feet from a man playing the Meditation from Thaïs, while across the street a group of young men sat on cartons and played bucket-drums like fireworks.
They were really good, it was like listening to a professional drum corps except there were only five of them making all the sound. They got asked to move be some passing police officers because they were good enough that their audience was huge and blocking the sidewalk. (Which sucked because they were super cool performers, but I thought it was fair because they weren't in the park, they were on the sidewalk across from it, in front of businesses and such.)
Elsewhere in the park, one of the largest single-plume fountains I've ever seen was doing its thing, spreading a message of hope and joy and BY THE WAY YOU'RE WET NOW to passers-by.
It was huge.
Oh and I forgot to mention I had my cello with me on this walkabout, so after getting a "real Chicago dog" from a vendor (as soon as I can figure how to get pictures off my phone, you can see it!) I went and found a place to sit down and play music for a bit!
I played my way through most of Bach's first solo suite (G major), realized I didn't have it memorized nearly as well as I thought I did, and switched to Julie-O and celtic music.
And I made $2.01 in 15 minutes*. PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN WHAT
*Which I promptly spent on the next two street performers I came across. Oh well.
There was also a lot of really neat sculptures in Millennium Park. Some neat statue-type things:
Lincoln gazing out onto the lettuce garden
. . . and some neat installation pieces . . .
The staring contest of the century
and also a really pretty whatever-this-is in the median of one of the streets (Van Buren? Maybe?):
Lots of beautiful things. I think I'd like to go back to that park again sometime and explore some more; I'm sure there's more art and more music than the small bit I saw.
And that was Chicago! Had a neat conversation with a guy who's also traveling across the country, only he's hitching rides on freight trains instead of driving. And I also found out as I was leaving that although the Millennium Park Garage is super convenient if you're going to be there for a while, it's also godsdamned expensive ($25 flat rate) so I didn't really get my money's worth out of it . . . oh well.
It's just over an hour drive to Milwaukee out of Chicago, so I made it there with plenty of energy. Went over to my friend Phil's apartment, got him, went to Denny's for dinner, and went and hung out with Chelsea for a while.
Now's probably a good time to reiterate: This blog will be moving locations sometime in the next few days! Chelsea's awesome and is going to be helping me with the move, and I'll make sure everyone gets told when it happens.
Okay, so that was Monday! Later today I'll post about the Milwaukee-Petoskey leg of The Journey. If you want to get a feel for that drive, though, check out the mini-post from last night.
From Petoskey, MI . . .
Julia
Poputnogo vetra, Djulia!
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