By Joyce, on September 9th, 2019
We always come to Chicago with a full schedule of restaurant plans, combining explorations of places opened since our previous visits with returns to some of our old favorites. Our 2019 trip was no exception. This trip combined an exploration of new restaurants (new, at least to us, from the three years since [Read more …]
By Joyce, on September 7th, 2019
 Changing Face of Chicago Architecture Every time we return to Chicago we are amazed by the amount of new high-rise construction and the beauty of many of its buildings. On one hand, this is not surprising. Chicago, after all, has been at the forefront of American architecture since 1884, when William Le Baron Jenney built [Read more …]
By Joyce, on August 30th, 2019
 Sweet Blues Chicago Chicago has long been one of the country’s premier Blues Venues. Our plan was to spend a number of hours reveling in its musical history at the city’s premier annual Blues Celebration: Chicago Blues Festival Every year Chicago holds a blues festival. In 2019, it held its 36th [Read more …]
By Joyce, on August 28th, 2019
 We lived in Chicago for 5 years a long time ago and always loved going to Chicago’s summertime art fairs, and visiting museums and galleries. We recently had a return trip to Chicago. Chicago Art Fairs We arranged our trip largely to accommodate two of the city’s oldest and best juried art fairs plus a [Read more …]
By Joyce, on June 29th, 2019
 We had been to this lovely Western Illinois home town of Ulysses S. Grant briefly, once before. We made a brief return visit on our way to the Wisconsin Dells. Galena was a lead mining and transportation center on a tributary near the Mississippi. It was a boom town in the early 19th century, when [Read more …]
By Joyce, on June 6th, 2016
 Our last Illinois stop on this trip was to our very old home Chicago–a city that we try to visit every couple years. Since we have already written and provided pictures of many of the neighborhoods and sights that we normally visit, we won’t repeat it all here. Instead, we will just provide an overview [Read more …]
By Joyce, on June 4th, 2016
 Despite having lived in Chicago, Illinois for five years in the 1970s, and having visited the city every two or three years since, we have never been to Springfield Illinois. We committed to overcoming this gap in our travels on a recent trip to the area by driving between Louisville and Chicago. The primary reason [Read more …]
By Tom, on August 25th, 2014
We always go to Chicago with a list of restaurants we would like to visit. This year’s list included a number of the city’s hottest new spots—spots such as Tanta, Nico Osteria, Fig and Olive and Kinmont. Unfortunately, based on limited time, the fact that many are not open for lunch and our desire to [Read more …]
By Tom, on August 23rd, 2014
 Our 2014 Chicago trip was designed primarily around two a chance to visit two “art” exhibits: An Art Institute of Chicago exhibit of Rene Magritte’s work from his most productive and innovative period, between 1926 and 1938; and A visit to three of Frank Lloyd Wright [Read more …]
By Tom, on August 4th, 2013
 We, as discussed in previous Chicago blog posts, love Chicago architecture and the incredibly informative tours that the Chicago Architectural Foundation provides to explain and provide broader sociological context around this architecture. Although we have, so far, taken fewer than 20 of the more than 90 different tours offered by CFA, we notch up one [Read more …]
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