Month: September 2018

We left Chicago and spent a few days visiting relatives in Illinois and Michigan. Then we crossed back into Canada to spend a few weeks in Montreal. We needed a place to spend some time on the East Coast between our Chicago visit and the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in late October, a highlight on Carrie’s knitting calendar. Montreal is a wonderful city but what sealed the deal was Charlie’s discovery that our beloved L.A. Kings hockey team would be playing in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto during October.

We rented a house in Longueuil, a suburb of Montreal just across the river from the city. We didn’t know exactly what we were getting but it turned out to be wonderful. Longueuil is a lovely old village and it is away from the congestion of the city and far off the tourist track, just what we like. We got a taste of what daily life is like for the Quebecois.

We were a bit surprised at the predominance of the French language. English is common in parts of Montreal, especially downtown and in the tourist areas. In Longueuil, however, French is the first language for most people. Some folks also speak English well, many speak a bit of English, and some speak only French. All of the signage is exclusively in French, including the food labels in the grocery store. The French we had learned in Lyon paid off.

Traffic in Montreal is terrible, the worst we have seen in any North American city. The infrastructure is old, apparently from the 1950s, so there aren’t many modern freeway interchanges. The good news is they are investing a lot of resources into improving their roads. The bad news is they are investing a lot of resources into improving their roads, so there is construction EVERYWHERE. Major freeways frequently narrow down to two lanes or even one lane. They say there are two seasons in Canada, winter and construction.

 

We met up with some of our Food Group friends in Chicago, eight of us in all. Half of the group had been to Chicago and loved it, and half were first time visitors. We decided earlier this year to meet there for a four-day vacation and we rented a big house in Wrigleyville, north of downtown just three blocks from Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs.

We packed a lot of activities into our short stay. Several of us visited the house and studio where Frank Lloyd Wright lived and worked for twenty years around the turn of the last century. The architecture reflected the prairie style that became his trademark.

A highlight of the week was an architecture boat tour on the Chicago River. Chicago is famous for its architecture and a boat tour is the best way to see it. Our tickets also allowed us entrance to the Chicago Architecture Center, a new museum across the street from the river.

The next day everybody enjoyed the day at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the world’s great art museums. We ended the day with a stroll through Millenium Park. We marveled at the reflective artwork in the Cloud Gate statue, nicknamed “The Bean” by the locals. An unexpected downpour hurried us back home for dinner.

Several of us took a tour of Wrigley Field, just down the street from our house in Wrigleyville. The Cubs were not playing during the week we were there so we got to see all of the parts of the ballpark, including the locker room, press box, and dugout. Wrigley Field is over a hundred years old and is the second oldest ballpark in the major leagues, second only to Fenway Park in Boston.

On our last evening in Chicago we visited Kingston Mines, a blues club on Chicago’s north side. We saw the Mike Wheeler Band, who we all agreed had one of the best bass players we had ever seen. We were having such a good time that we stayed up past our bedtimes to see an extra set.

We left California to spend a few days driving to Chicago to meet up with friends there. There is a lot of wide open country in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and we enjoyed watching the scenery change as we drove east and seeing the small towns in what some people call “fly-over country.” Carrie noticed lots of deer in the cow pastures in Wyoming. Charlie: “It’s where the deer and the antelope play.” We never grow tired of driving cross-country and seeing the variety in our vast nation.

We spent a day in Des Moines, Iowa, visiting with Carrie’s stepbrother, Theo, and some of his extended family there. Theo moved to Des Moines from California over a year ago and we wanted to see his new town. Des Moines seems to be a very livable city and it has a lot to offer. Theo took us to the Des Moines Botanical Garden and to a downtown t-shirt shop that had lots of hilarious and irreverent shirts.