Boston Again

June 17, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: art, books, Boston, children, culture, education, family, food, history, reviews 2 Comments

Oh Boston. Why are you so awesome? You have cobblestone and history and beautiful architecture. You have gas burning lanterns and important museums and perfect public gardens. It’s not right. You put so many other towns to shame.

a little street on the Hill

Since the show was recently in Worcester, Mass., only 45 minutes outside Boston, we went for an afternoon visit. Since we were only there for a little wander about, I’ve dug into the archives from our last Boston trip to highlight some of our favorite spots.

For Your Tummy

Since we only had time for a stop at Four Burgers on this trip, I asked our highly trained professional foodie, Emily, to tell us where to go when we’re in Boston next time.

Learn more about the awesome Four Burgers—>Eating in Boston

Boston EATS:

Neptune Oyster Bar – this is a great place for old world Italian Seafood. The lobster roll (buttered or mayo’d) is crazy delicious. But you can go there in the early afternoon for some oysters and crab claws and a glass of cold chardonnay and be perfectly content. It’s small and can get very crowded. You can sit up at the bar where they shuck the shellfish, or nestle into one of the few booths available if you’re lucky to get one. It is near a lot of other wonderful Little Italy spots, so it’s a good walking area to visit.

neptuneoyster.com

Toro – Delicious Tapas. This is in the South End and is really lovely. The owner is Ken Oringer who is super talented and down to earth and the head chef is award winner Jamie Bissonette who is really creative. Perfect small plates to share.

citizenpub.com

Citizen Public House – Gastropub fare. Small tavern feel. It’s behind Fenway Park so it’s a little bit of that scene, but the food is inspired and yummy (meat and fish and cocktails and beers)

Parish Cafe – fun, very Boston. They have a selection of sandwiches (and other items) that have each been created by famous chefs in the area. I think there are two locations.

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Boston SWEETS:

Tatte – A serious patisserie, and the owner is actually an Israeli woman whose first career was in film. They have stunning and delicious fruit tarts and unique nut tarts, as well as the usual sweet bakery goods. The small space is designed so wonderfully, you kind of just want to hang out there.

tattecookies.com

Clear Flour Bread – It’s not in the center of town (it’s in Brookline), it’s on a non-descript neighborhood corner, but it is on a T-stop. And it is the best bakery I have ever been to. Bakery as in daily bread place… no seating, you go there and get your baked goods and go. I think they have coffee. It feels tres French. They have seasonal tarts and almond croissants and utterly beautiful, perfectly executed things like that, but their simple loaves of bread are so divine. At the end of a shoot day there I actually just bought a loaf of bread, brought it back to the hotel room and ate the whole thing for dinner with a glass of red.

Flour Bakery – They have a couple of locations now, I think. This place is really good and you can get breakfast and lunch items there too. More of a coffee shop/hang-out-for-a-while-if-you-want kind of place. The owner/pastry chef was an applied maths major at Harvard, with honors! One thing that is really good is their sticky bun, get it heated. It’s ooey gooey good, not as big as the one in Charleston, so it’s manageable! But their other bakery items and salads and eggs and sandwiches are all good too.

flourbakery.com

Emily and her sticky buns!

For the Kiddies

Our last visit had us in The Boston Children’s Museum for hours. Since we have traveled so much of the country now and have been to almost every children’s museum, I think I may be oddly qualified to say, Boston’s is one of the best in the country.

Learn more—>The Boston Children’s Museum

For Wandering

sc244356.fpx&obj=iip,1.0&wid=568&cell=568,427&cvt=jpeg

John Hancock painted by John Singleton Copely mfa.org

Museum of Fine Arts-

Boston is where it all began, so you might as well visit The Art of the Americas Wing. See dreamy portraits, beautiful furniture and riveting pieces of history.

The Public Garden-

Read or re-read Robert McClosky’s, Make Way for Ducklings. Then visit the pond they call home and the statue erected in their honor…then you too can feed them thistles, like G did.

the Public Garden

Charles Street-there is nothing like it. It’s a quaint, slip of a thing with shops so tiny you might just have to hold your breath to squeeze into them.

Beacon Hill-go there for a walk, it’s just off Charles Street. Get a coffee and stroll around. Look at the flower boxes, imagine the sound of hooves as they struck the pavement late at night, try not to peer into people’s windows-because that’s weird-but do have someone take your photo.

For more on Charles Street and Beacon Hill click here—>Boston

For more Boston history and must see landmarks—>What We LOVED in Boston

Our next stop was Baltimore.

Saint Martin

May 6, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: children, family, history, life, NYC, St. Martin 6 Comments

We came down to St. Martin for a vacation. We don’t go on “vacation” vacations. Michael and I are very similar in our tastes and we’d always much rather explore a place for its culture, food or history, rather than just plop down on a beach somewhere.

But our life currently feels like a constant vacation and from that we needed a vacation. There is something to be said for the all inclusive resort tucked away on a Caribbean Island. It’s not our style (for reasons I will spare you from), but in the end we all decompressed with no internet, phones, or errands…just a pool, a beach, an ocean, a book.

St. Martin is in the Caribbean, it’s half Dutch and half French and that was all I learned about it. There was also this spider. G checked on him twice a day to be sure he was alright.

The whole week Michael kept asking me if I was ok, he said I had a look on my face he wasn’t used to seeing and it concerned him. We finally decided it was just how I looked when I was relaxed.

Our next stop was New York City.

Gone With the Wind

April 10, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: Charleston, children, education, family, history, life, parenting 6 Comments

There is something to be said for the sheltered upbringing offered by a quiet, American suburb during the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was a life of safety and comfort, where anything and everything seemed possible if you just put your mind to it. Bad things always happened to someone else, somewhere else and there was no internet or 24 hour news cycle to remind me otherwise. I just tossed my parent’s weekly TIME magazine along with life’s other questionable areas unexamined and unexplained into the junk drawer of my childhood.

newurbanarchitect.com

I want to raise my son the same way. Of course, the difficult aspect of this kind of upbringing is the shock you can experience when you begin to understand the more brutal reality of the world. It can unmoor your foundation, the very way you organized your understanding of things. Some might say this is simply the process of growing up. And that is true, to a certain degree. Lost idealism is a byproduct of aging of course.

This would be the moment when my almost 3 year old son would say, “Ecuse me MaMa. Why you talking about?”

“Well sweetie, when we were in Charleston I took you to visit the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, and while its trees and flowers are very beautiful to look at, I can’t stop thinking about how to explain to you what happened at these old plantation houses that makes them important.”

“Oh.”

Azaleas and Live Oaks Magnolia Plantation South Carolina

flashcoo.com

There is a story in my family about my great (or great great?) grandparents on my mother’s side I just can’t seem to shake out of my head lately. At some point in his life, my great grandfather made an untold amount of money in the slave trade. I’m not sure if he was in a sort of Jean Valjean position where he NEEDED that money to survive, or if he just saw it as a way to make some extra money.

When my great grandmother found out what he did (because let’s face it ladies, we always do) she was beside herself. They (or their parents?) had come to this country to make a better life. How could he then make money off the backs of people who almost certainly did not come here for a better life, but were instead forced to come here for a life of servitude and subordination?

magnoliaplantation.com

Well, we all tell ourselves whatever we need to tell ourselves in order to sleep at night. It’s part of human nature. Every time I turn on my iPad I think for a second about how and where it was made, what the lives of people are like in places where forced labor is the only way of life. But I turn it on anyway, in fact, I just lied, I don’t think about it every time I turn on my iPad, that’s just how much I’ve convinced myself I do.

Maybe my great grandfather thought, ‘Well, if I don’t do it, someone else will. It might as well be me who makes that money and uses it for my family.’ And that is not an illogical argument, it is not an untruth. It is a skill we as humans have to ensure our survival. In order to survive in the wilderness, any type of wilderness, we might have to step on one of our own. We can if we have the innate ability to rationalize our behavior. It’s an uncomfortable reality of life, of nature. But I wonder, if this tool humans have, this innate ability, is supposed to be utilized for survival or once you have enough to survive is it supposed to be used to enable the individual and those closest to him the ability to thrive?

The entrance to the Magnolia Estate circa mid 1800s
magnoliaplantation.com

Some say yes, especially in this day and age, again…if you don’t, somebody else will. But my great grandmother didn’t seem think so. When she found out what her husband did she instead put her own security at risk. She made her husband make their home in Ohio part of the underground railroad. And he did. It was a crime punishable by a government who had not yet amended its Constitution. The barn of their house was one of many stops along the complex, word of mouth path to freedom for escaped slaves…it was also a path for dangerous bounty hunters and Federal Marshals.

G just inside the entrance to the Magnolia Estate 2013

I love this story. I want to teach my son to be brave like his great great (or great great great) grandmother, to move forward in life with unquestionable dignity and unwavering integrity. The paradox of parenting, however, is I also want him to survive…and thrive. I don’t want bounty hunters to ever come along his path. So while I grapple with this, I suppose I’ll find a place to start G’s junk drawer.

Our next stop was Florida.

This is the South

April 3, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: Boston, Charleston, children, culture, education, family, food, history, New Orleans, NYC 4 Comments

We spent our time in Charlotte, North Carolina in constant deliberation as to whether or not we should take G to Urgent Care for a persistent, week long fever of 104 (!!!). BUT—we were able to visit a playground to see this ladybug…

the Discovery Place to see this octopus…

and Michael was even able to get this killer shot of G while he peeked into a mini aquarium…

Sorry Charlotte. That’s all we had time for. We hear you have a lovely NASCAR museum. Maybe next time.

A drinking fountain in the historic battery

But then we were off to Charleston, South Carolina (where of course I got sick—but are Moms really allowed to be sick? No…not really).

Charleston. Oh Charleston. Of all the towns we’ve visited in the United States, Charleston has thrilled me the most. This is not just because I am sort of an old fogey who signs her name like she just signed the Declaration of Independence, but because it took me by surprise. I paid attention to boys in high school when I should have paid attention to my history teacher, so I was shocked to learn that Charleston is steeped not only in Civil War history, but in Revolutionary War history as well. It rivals Boston, New Orleans and even New York City for its beautifully preserved, historic architecture.

Rainbow Row-a section of restored homes

I tried to convince M to forget about us and instead to focus on the tiny alley behind us. It was once an original street

When you walk down these alleyways you find hidden, perfectly preserved houses from the 1700s.

I wish I had the time to write a fully detailed post about the many incredible sights, but alas…not only do I not, we also didn’t have the opportunity to explore nearly as much as we would have liked. It is definitely a spot Michael and I decided we would visit for a long weekend again one day when we can take the proper tourist horse and buggy ride.

Of course, not only is Charleston full to the brim with history, it is also full of incredible food…most of it sweet. In fact, one hot afternoon I ordered mint iced tea from a man who asked if I wanted sweetened or unsweetened.

‘How sweet is sweet?’ I asked.

‘This is the south,’ he said.

Pittsburgh in January

March 4, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: art, children, culture, education, family, history, Les Miserables, life, Michigan, parenting, Pittsburgh 7 Comments

The Benedum Center in Pittsburgh where Les Mis played. Beautiful right?

Oooooops…I published this post yesterday by accident…unfinished! Gulp. Let me try again—

So what do you do in Pittsburgh for 2 weeks in the middle of January? Honestly I thought we were doomed. It would be cold and gray and industrial and dreary. I knew the whole Heinz ketchup situation started in Pittsburgh, but I wasn’t in the mood for any more John Kerry factoids in my life. When I bemoaned this fact over dinner one night in Philadelphia, my very brilliant and optimistic Uncle said to me, “Don’t be fooled. All the culture of Pennsylvania is not contained in Philadelphia.”

He said it in a way that sounded like a challenge. It made me feel sort of competitive, sort of sporting, I swiftly became determined to seek out all the culture I could find in Pittsburgh that did not involve ketchup. The results did more than just keep our seasonal affects disorder at bay, it actually moved Pittsburgh up to the top of the list of places I think we should visit again.

Watch the REAL trains go by outside your hotel room window.

We watched REAL, live trains go by outside our hotel room window.

Learn about electricity at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum

At the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh we learned about electricity…

Go to a bouncy house with Briana---Pittsburgh Children's Museum

… & bouncy housed with Briana.

We visited the first famous Pittsburgh Andy Museum---Warhol

One of Pittsburgh’s famous Andys is Warhol…

We chased helium balloons at the Andy Warhol museum

…& it can only be in his museum that you can go into a room with nothing but mylar balloons.

The Aviary got us up close to Bald Eagles…

…penguins…

& an adorable Kookaburra (photo by Ron Reznick)

While I didn’t get a shot of him…I did get a recording of his fantastic call— cuckamp3

Pittsburgh’s other famous Andy is Carnegie. At his museum we met R2D2—Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi…

Play GIANT Operation---Carnegie Science Center

…& played GIANT Operation…

but the best thing there was the miniature model of the city...

but the best thing there was a miniature model of the city…

…and its electric train…THOMAS!

Michael took so many great shots…

I have to share them all…

Frank Lloyd Wright’s house—Fallingwater

every 15 minutes it would become night night and the city would light up

Every 15 minutes it would become night and the miniature city would light up

Our next stop was Kalamazoo…

For the Record

February 25, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel, Writing Tags: art, culture, education, history, life, Philadelphia 2 Comments

ifcfilms.com

The fantastic blogger Azita over at Fig & Quince, reminded me about the documentary film on the Barnes titled, The Art of the Steal. My hairdresser that day in Philly told me I should watch it as well and it completely slipped my mind. We watched it last night (it streams on Netflix) and according to this film, what actually went down over there at the Barnes makes me feel like my post about his art was a bit glib. Well, I mean, obviously it was glib, but the seriousness and seediness of the saga is fascinating and paints an oily film over Philly and politics and organized philanthropy in general.

But…it’s also difficult to take sides or make any sort of judgement since the story is really a tale as old as time. It’s about greed, money, resentment, envy and ultimately power; a Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy steeped in irony. Just ultimately…human. Watch the film when you can. In the meantime, the story from my hairdresser is reprinted below—with corrections in bold.

This man named Dr. Barnes had a tough life, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Philly, etcetera. He made his fortune by inventing ~~acetaminophen? Maybe? Something like that~~ a drug to treat gonorrhea. In the era of ~~Gertrude Stein, at the height of French Impressionism~~Impressionism, Post Impressionism & Modern, he had a lot of money from selling his company and decided to collect art…a lot of art…30 billion dollars worth of art…~~maybe less. I can’t remember~~. He sequestered it away in a museum he built specifically around the collection, just outside of Philadelphia. In fact, the building was SO specific it was actually built around a painting, I believe by ~~Manet~~ Matisse. However, Barnes decided he would only make this collection accessible to ~~children~~students who attended ~~a specific school~~the art school he made out of the collection, it was not to be viewed by the public. And MOST importantly he did not want the art to fall into the hands of the Philadelphia art world…he didn’t want a commercial value placed on it.

Dr. Barnes—karenfriedland.wordpress.com

“Why?” Michael interrupted.

I guess he thought they were all a lot of uppity so and so’s. Oh…and there was also something about Annenberg. ~~They got into an argument one night.~~ ~~I think~~ Barnes continually told Annenberg he shouldn’t be so snooty because everyone knew his ~~grandfather~~ father made all of his money in the mafia. ~~Apparently~~ This was common knowledge, Annenberg Sr. had been in jail for tax evasion, but Annenberg, I guess, had the same sense of humor as maybe someone like…Tom Cruise. Right? You know what I mean, right? No sense of humor…especially about anything related to his own shortcomings. So Annenberg & Barnes never spoke again, and tried to take each other down in various ways whenever they had the opportunity.

“Soooo…”

Oo Oo Oo! Wait! So when Barnes died at age 78 in a car crash…he had no heirs and a will that stated 2 things:

The first was that this art ~~is for this nice school~~ was to be continued to be used for the school. And it was for about 40 years after Dr. Barnes died. A teacher ran the institution exactly as Barnes wished until she died. Then it went to Lincoln University, a very small university with a primarily African American student body. The Philly Art Museum and Penn were dissed, purposefully. You just have the watch the film to see what happened next. It’s a great big hubris filled messfest, mostly involving this guy…

~~But of course, over time, the school couldn’t afford to take care of the art, so~~ Eventually ~~the state of Pennsylvania~~ Philadelphia said, ‘Hey! Lincoln University, how would you like 50 million dollars (a fortune to a school that size)? We’ll give you the money if you give us the art.’ Uh-huh. ~~This is how the will was broken so the public was able to view the art.~~
The second stipulation of the will was that the art must NEVER, EVER, EVER be moved into the city of Philadelphia.

“But wait, I thought the Barnes Museum was in Philladelphia?”

It is! Dr. Messite attended the opening of the new space in Philly just last year. And guess who’s primarily responsible for breaking the will and funding the move? The Annenberg Foundation, even! (…along with the Pew Charitable Trust and the Mayor of Philly.)

So, my hairdresser is boycotting the museum.

How I Knew Things Before Google

February 22, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel, Writing Tags: art, books, culture, education, history, humor, life, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh 5 Comments

I promise you I will not continually post 3 times a week. I just need to get caught up. Philly was AGES ago!!

“I just got some serious scoop from the hairdresser I saw,” I said to Michael as I came back into the hotel room.

“Ok…?”

“Well, I just mentioned to him, I wanted to visit a few museums while we were here in Philly and he raised one eyebrow at me…and then sort of asked me out of the side of his mouth (I tried to recreate the effect as I explained)…if I planned to go to the Barnes Museum. He made me so nervous I just said no.”

“Why? Isn’t that the one Dr. Messite told us we had to visit?”

Dr. Messite is our hilarious and elegantly old school dentist. We love him so much, he attended our wedding. He also has a voice similar to Snagglepuss from the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but don’t tell him I said so.

Elizabeth you must go to the Barnes Museum when you’re in Philadelphia. Marilyn and I drove down for the opening and it’s just magnificent, splendiferous even.

“So what’s the story?” Michael asked, bringing me back into the room.

“Well, bear in mind I have obviously not fact checked or google searched any of this, plus I don’t think I can recall all of it accurately so, this is strictly salon gossip,” I paused, “you know I just heard your eyes roll even though I didn’t see them.”

“What’s the story?”

“Ok, this is pretty much what the hair dresser told me…

This man named Barnes had a tough life, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, etcetera. He made his fortune by inventing acetaminophen? Maybe? Something like that. In the era of Gertrude Stein, at the height of French Impressionism he had a lot of money and decided to collect art…a lot of art…30 billion dollars worth of art…maybe less. I can’t remember. He sequestered it away in a museum he built specifically around the collection, just outside of Philadelphia. In fact, the building was SO specific it was actually built around a painting, I believe by Manet. However, Barnes decided he would only make this collection accessible to children who attended a specific school, it was not to be viewed by the public. And MOST importantly he did not want the art to fall into the hands of the Philadelphia art world…

“Why?” Michael interrupted.

nytimes.com–A Picasso from his blue period…

I guess he thought they were all a lot of uppity so and so’s. Oh…and there was also something about Annenberg. They got into an argument one night. I think Barnes told Annenberg he shouldn’t be so snooty because everyone knew his grandfather made all of his money in the mafia. Apparently this was common knowledge, but Annenberg, I guess, had the same sense of humor as maybe someone like…Tom Cruise. Right? You know what I mean, right? No sense of humor…especially about anything related to his own shortcomings. So Annenberg & Barnes never spoke again.

“Soooo…”

wikipedia.org–van Gogh’s Postman

Oo Oo Oo! Wait! So when Barnes died…he had no heirs and a will that stated 2 things:

The first was that this art is for this nice school. But of course, over time, the school couldn’t afford to take care of the art, so the state of Pennsylvania said, ‘Hey! We’ll give you the money if you give us the art.’ Uh-huh. This is how the will was broken so the public was able to view the art.

The second stipulation of the will was that the art must NEVER, EVER, EVER be moved into the city of Philadelphia.

“But wait, I thought the Barnes Museum was in Philladelphia?”

vanityfair.com

It is! Dr. Messite attended the opening of the new space in Philly just last year. And guess who’s primarily responsible for breaking the will and funding the move? The Annenberg Foundation, even! So, my hairdresser is boycotting the museum.

“Are we?”

No WAY! I booked tickets on my walk back to the hotel.

For more in-depth (correct) information on the Barnes click here.

While I’m very sorry Mr. Barnes’ final wishes were not honored, I am very glad I was able to view so many fabulous paintings displayed so meaningfully. It was an unforgettable experience however it came to be.

Photographs were strictly prohibited inside the museum. For a lovely slide show from the NYTimes click here.

Our next stop was Pittsburgh.

Droppin’ Ben Franklins

February 20, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Inspiration, Travel Tags: blogs, books, history, humor, life, Philadelphia 5 Comments

“I’ll have you know, Benjamin Franklin has had a huge influence on my life,” I said indignantly to my husband.

“Oh really, Granny?” he smirked, “How so?”

“Well, his virtue chart, for example. He created a very effective system which brought a series of tasks into his daily awareness in order to refine his character. It’s been scientifically proven to work because the chart visually keeps your goals at the forefront of your mind. In fact, Gretchen Rubin, one of my personal heroes, based her entire Happiness Project on the system of Benjamin Franklin’s virtue chart…”

“All right, all right, I hear you. You’re a big fan of charts and Declarations of Independence, but do you really need to buy a book of his quotes? You can just look them up on line you know.”

Just LOOK at how moved I am by a compilation of his quotes projected on the walls…!

“No no no. I need a hard copy, something I can refer to.”

“Ah yes,” he smiled, “something you can refer to once, but will never refer to again.”

“How dare you sir! How dare you presume to know that I will not refer to my slim Benjamin Franklin quote book on a daily basis?”

“Because I know you my darling. You will buy it, you will schlep it around in your bag and you will never look at it more than once.”

“Be that as it may, Mr. Party Pooper Pants. We’re in Philadelphia. We’re at the Franklin Institute. It would be philosophically irresponsible and unpatriotic if I did not somehow glean some wisdom here from one of our country’s most famous founders.”

With that, I purchased the slim volume. I took it back to the hotel and tore into it as soon as G went to sleep.

One of the first quotes I read was:

An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.

Oh man. I haven’t looked at it since.

Welcome to the White House

January 23, 2013 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: art, blogs, Connecticut, culture, education, family, history, Kansas City, Les Miserables, NYC, Washington DC 3 Comments

Traveling back in time again…this time to December 2012…we flew from Kansas City to Washington DC via an airplane with a fox on the wing, which we all really dug.

But I will not lie, our time in DC was not as well spent as it could have been. Things were busy and pressured and then of course, the awful news out of Connecticut…

But there is so much to ingest in DC, historically & culturally, I thought I’d take you even further back in time to our 2011 visit…where Michael officially began to Dream the Dream.

MUSEUMS:

(Mind you, what you see below is FAR from a comprehensive list)

They are all free (with the exception of a few like the Spy Museum and the Newseum). This makes it easy to walk in, spend an hour, walk out, go back the next day.

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History-Dinosaurs and diamonds make a perfect combination.

The Hope Diamond:si.edu

National Museum of American History-Our Nation’s preserved history runs the gamut from the Civil War to Dorothy’s slippers.

americanhistory.si.edu

The National Gallery of Art-Just beautiful. We went in 2011 when G was just 18 months. We wandered back again one somber afternoon in 2012 to find it filled with flowers for the holidays.

So much to see. Degas…

…and this Picasso from his blue period, are just 2 of my favorites.

MONUMENTS & MEMORIALS:

Let’s see—we have the Lincoln Memorial…

2011

…The Jefferson Memorial…

photo by ehpien on Flickr

…The World War II Memorial…

photo by Joost Verbeek

…the Washington Monument.

GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS:

The Capital…outside…

2011

…and in…

inside the dome

…The Library of Congress…

2011

Mini Bourne 2011

…and Watergate, as seen here in the background. We like to call these 2 shots—The Bourne Identity-Escape From Watergate—where G plays a young Matt Damon.

And then, of course, we have the White House. You can view it from the front…you can view it from the back…and if you look closely you can find this little button on a gate that does not work any longer, but says Welcome.

The front…2012

The back…decorated for Christmas.

The Button

For the full 2011 DC posts, click the links below.

Washington DC 2011 Part 1

Washington DC 2011 Part 2

Next stop was NYC.

Bueller Style

November 26, 2012 By ElizabethWolf in Travel Tags: art, Chicago, children, culture, education, family, history, Paris, reviews 6 Comments

a view of the city from the Shedd Aquarium

thisorthat.com

It is nice to know that after all these years, Ferris Bueller‘s Chicago still delights. We’ve had run-ins with just about everything Ferris did, with the exception of Wrigley Field and Charlie Sheen, but who knows? We still have 2 weeks to go. With wind burned cheeks and lips that peel off when we speak, we are tearing through this gusty blast of a town. We just love it. It is the true capital of the mid-west. Sophisticated, but not elitist. Forward thinking, but not crunchy granola. Confident, but not narcissistic. And of course…it has a fantastic sense of humor.

Wait! Did I just describe myself? BAH Ha Ha!

Moving on…

our eventual view to the left of the Wrigley

The start of our trip was actually not terrific. We had a one bedroom apt on Michigan Ave, sight unseen. We’ve had great luck in this department so far, but yikes…our luck ran out at this place. It wasn’t clean, so that was that. BUT it was also lit with all florescent light, and I don’t mean eco-low watt bulbs. I mean, full on, high school lunch room florescent light. If I learned anything from Deborah, it is that under no circumstances should one allow themselves to be poorly lit. In fact, she basically lived in a dark cave after she turned 50.

and our eventual view of Navy Pier to the right

Luckily, Michael found the last place available in all of Chicago (at our price point) on North Columbus and we were thrilled to walk into not just a clean and lovely apartment, but floor to ceiling windows that provided us views of (other hotel rooms and) bits of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan itself.

This brings us to to our first Ferris activity…a parade. We weren’t in it, but we did go watch it. The Magnificent Mile is a stretch of Michigan Avenue that starts just across the river. It boasts lovely shopping and at Christmas time they light it. But they don’t just light it, they have a big parade book ended by Mickey Mouse and Santa, then fireworks, then they light it. A lady at the grocery store told me all about it. The best place to stand, she said, was along the river in front of the Hyatt. Really? I thought. That’s one of the hotels we can see into from our apartment. How perfect is that?

So I took G at 5 that day and stood in the cold with some lovely people who gave him chips and juice and then Michael joined us at 6 when the parade started. We saw Mickey and Minnie and then we left at 630. If you didn’t know, Michael doesn’t enjoy crowds or parades really, and besides, my feet had turned into ice chunks. No matter! We could watch the rest of the parade from the safety and comfort of our apartment…at least the bits we could see in the corners. This was a good move considering the fireworks were loud and according to one little man…scary.

Our next Ferris inspired adventure was a climb up to the top of the of the John Hancock building, made very accessible by the world’s fastest elevator (I think that’s what they said). The miniature views of the city below are of course, spectacular. But the view of that great Lake Michigan is just beyond. It goes on and on and I have always felt so comforted to know that there is not ONE shark in it.

Lastly we hit the fantastic Art Institute of Chicago. I could really do a whole separate post on it, I enjoyed it so much, but I don’t have time! Ack. We of course went to see it’s big prize, the impressionist pointillism by

I snapped this section above the heads of other viewers

Georges Seurat, Sunday on La Grande Jatte. It did not disappoint. Unlike the Mona Lisa that is so teeny tiny, this painting is something you can, in fact, get lost in. It’s no surprise, I spent most of my time in the Parisian impressionist section, but I also have to say G and I really enjoyed the Thorne Miniature Rooms. These rooms are honestly miniature, I mean the few rooms you see below are completely miniature reproductions, 1 inch to 1 foot in scale. Mrs. Thorne was married to a wealthy Chicago so and so (James Ward of the whole Montgomery Ward situation), and decided to create rooms with her overwhelming abundance of doll house miniatures. Eventually she began to commission pieces by artisans to her exacting standards in order to complete her rooms with absolute historical accuracy, quite a hobby.

English dining room-Georgian: artic.edu

Virginia dining room, c. 1800: artic.edu

French Boudoir-Louis XV: artic.edu

A few other delightful attractions that I don’t recall Ferris getting to on his day off, include the Millennium Park, which is right up there with all the great urban oases of this country. To ramp it up a notch it features some pretty futuristic and ‘new millennium’ inspired art, which brings us to ‘Cloud Gate,’ or what locals refer to as the Bean. On the outside it reflects the city of Chicago…

and underneath it reflects all the tourists as they take photos of it…

can you find us?

Michael also got this great shot of G apparently floating into the sky—YES!

Also we have the Shedd Aquarium which is part of Chicago’s gigantic museum campus. This is not just any old aquarium, it is the world’s largest marine mammal habitat. That just means it houses and takes tremendous care of beautiful sea mammals. The dolphin show alone was worth the visit. It takes place inside a giant infinity pool that looks out into the vast Lake Michigan. We also saw a Dora the Explorer 4-D movie, the baby Beluga whale that was just born in August, sharks, sting rays, and penguins. AND it is so very toddler friendly. We did the CityPass, by the way. It was well, well worth it.

the Beluga that swam right up to us

Michael and the little man also hit The Field Museum, which is housed on the museum campus as well. He said it was a GIANT museum of natural history that a Wes Anderson movie should be filmed in immediately. When asked what his favorite part of the Field Museum was, G will tell you—Monkey Skeletons…Monkey Skeletons—Monkey Skeletons. They left quite an impression.

Well, after all of this, by the time this post publishes, we will STILL have another week left in Chicago.

Any tips? Favorite spots? Places you’d like us to go and snap photos of? Please leave your recommendations/requests in the comment section below. Have a great week.

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