An overnighter in Chicago

When I should be baking cookies.

We got up Saturday morning and went to pick up our Thanksgiving turkey at the indoor farmers’ market. Actually we sneaked into the Monona Terrace lot and transferred the box with our name on it from the back of Matt’s truck to the back of our car, and then went inside to pay him. I also bought apples for pie and sauce, and eggs, and cheddar cheese for the corn pudding. Mark got some lettuce. Pretty much everything else for Thanksgiving came in my Tipi Thanksgiving box, that I picked up last Thursday.

When we got home I put the covers on the jam cookies and put the trays into the freezer and packed for Chicago and ate a bagel.

I made the jam cookies square this year. There are 209, which seems a bit low, and it took me almost 5 hours – from 4:00 to 9:00 PM on Friday.

When we got to Chicago we checked in at the hotel, the formerly Kimpton, now IHG, Hotel Allegro, that used to be the Bismarck, home of the Midwest Archives Conference Spring meeting, and then we headed to Wrightwood 659, a museum in Lincoln Park that used to be an apartment building. We looked at a bunch of (rather depressing) paintings by Tetsuya Ishida, and admired the building. Then we went and ate dinner at Furious Spoon, because looking at Ishida’s pictures of beer and fried shrimp made me crave spicy noodles.

[portfolio_slideshow pagerpos=disabled exclude=”5723,5724,5725,5726,5728,5727″]

I forgot to take any pajamas – not used to have to bring the basics since we’ve had the apartment for the last five years, for trips to Chicago, where I always had a toothbrush, hairbrush, pajamas, clean underwear … so it made lounging at the hotel a little less lounge-y.

Sunday we got Do-Rite donuts and Dollop coffee and then went to see the big Andy Warhol show at the Art Institute.

[portfolio_slideshow pagerpos=disabled exclude=”5714,5715,5716,5717,5718,5719,5720,5721,5722″]

We looked at the Chicago tree, that had been lit on Saturday night with a big parade and huge crowds (the news said one million people) by night and by day.

We walked through the Christkindelmarket, but it was too crowded to buy anything, although I kind of coveted a cup of the Glühwein, that was being served in the souvenir mugs – although more people seemed to have a penguin than this boot.

Finally, it was Corner Bakery sandwiches, and Chicago Symphony – the Planets, but also a short modern piece, Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, by James Lee III, that was a nice prelude to the Holst. The composer was in the audience and came up for a bow. And the program notes explained the Gustav Holst who wrote the Planets was a relation of Hermann von Holst, a Prairie School architect in Chicago, friend of the Glessners who were CSO patrons.

We picked up our bags at the hotel, got a last coffee at the adjacent Starbucks, and the 6:30 train, and were back in Madison just before 10:00.