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Chicago, Illinois
A photograph of myself is all I have to show for seven years of river walkways, seven weeks of staying up all night
It's nice that the Chicago Architecture Foundation is more popular now, but it does kind of suck that every boat your and every interesting walking tour seems already sold out before you even get there. Still at least they still have this, a spectacular scale model of all of the interesting parts of Chicago (pictured below), sitting dead center in a great space (not pictured below).
If it’s a beautiful June day and you have time to kill, why not head over to the park where you don’t know what you’ll end up finding. Well that’s not completely true, For example, I was expecting to find Renzo Piano's Art Institute addition, but maybe not all of the spring flowers in bloom in front of it. And farther down in Grant Park, I was expecting great views but maybe not expecting to see so many people, all there for the last day of the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park, something I found out by mistake but something I was still able to enjoy at least part of.
From O'Hare if you take the Blue Line all the way to Clark/Lake and then walk a few blocks, get on the Red Line and take it to the last stop and then cross the platform to the Purple Line and take that train to its last stop, then walk about three blocks you'll be here, the spectacular Baha'I Temple way out in Evanston. The building has a real mosque feel, something which makes sense considering the history of the Baha'I religion (worth looking up on your own on Wikipedia- they believe in everything and nothing, depending on your perspective). The interior was even more spectacular, a concrete tracery dome lit from above, but sadly no interior photography was permitted.
We’ve moved on from Chicago to an entirely different weekend, where we replaced the good weather with a cold rain, and replaced the Blues festival with BBQ, or in this case, Bar-B-Q. This is Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn in Owensboro, Kentucky, an hour and a half west of Louisville, longer if there’s a cold rain outside. This was a recommendation from a friend whose BBQ (or in this case, Bar-B-Q) recommendations I trust without question. It was most definitely as good as its reputation, and is worth the trip if you are within a reasonable distance of Owensboro, cold rain or not.
Keeping with the BBQ (or in this case, Barbecue) theme, we’re in Washington, DC for the Safeway National Capital Barbecue Festival, which closed down city streets and replaced them with tents of BBQ (or in this case, Barbecue), although the scorching hot weather made hanging out in the middle of the street slightly less desirable. Maybe that’s what the Iowa Pork Queen is telling me as I took this picture, although honestly I can not remember what she was saying. I sure hope it wasn’t something like: “Help and get me out of here before they make me go back to Iowa!”, but again, I have no solid recollection of what was said.
The slideshow quickly shifts from the Iowa Pork Queen to become all about the arch. Eero Saarinen's masterpiece in St Louis is still impressive in person and still worth the trouble to see. After clearing a security checkpoint, buying a $10 timed entry ticket and waiting in line, you eventually board a little tiny spherical train car (with a 4 foot high door and seats (but not necessarily room for) five passengers. It's a little like tomorrowland or 2001, back in the good old days when the future seemed so optimistic.
630 feet later you're up on top, looking down at St Louis and realizing that without the arch there's really not all that much to look at down there.
The next morning I started my St Louis day with a tour of the fully restored Fox Theatre. Built in 1929, it's the country's second largest theatre (after Radio City) and is just crazy over the top ornate. This view is looking down at the lobby from the upper balcony level, all faux painted plaster and indeterminate exotic imagery.
I have been to some crazy ass places in my life, but the City Museum here in St Louis may just be the craziest. It includes art installations of caves and dinosaurs and whales, along with adults allowed slides and hidden passageways and mazes. And that's only part of it. There's an almost serious architectural fragment exhibit, but to balance that out there's the world's biggest pencil and the world's largest pair of underpants, both are really, really big.
Compared to the City Museum, the majestic great hall of Union Station seems kind of boring, although I guess that's an unfair comparison.
One of three free contemporary art museums I visited today in St Louis, this is the Pulitzer Museum designed by Tadao Ando, with it's very own walk through Richard Serra sculpture called "Joe," a great name for just about anything, although I guess I may be a bit biased on that front.
The last St Louis pictures for today are of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, advertised as having the most mosaics under one roof in the world. It is rather spectacular inside, with glass and gold sparkling on every ceiling and under every dome.
This trip to St Louis was possible because of a work trip to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a town so small that I was literally the only passenger on the connecting Cape Air flight out of Lambert Field. I was not there long, but did look online before I got there to see if there was any reason to spend some extra time there. While reading the Wikitravel article about it, I found the harshest ever quote about Cape Girardeau under the “Get Out” section:
Leaving Cape Girardeau is one of the most magical experiences a traveler can have. The city offers numerous well-maintained roads leading out, but Interstate 55 is highly recommended, as it allows the maximum speed possible for escaping the city.
Harsh. Possibly accurate, but still harsh.
