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2006 Canada

Chicago

   

The rain continued, making me wonder if there would be a single day on this trip where I could take photos without a gray sky. Normally, I love rain and gray and gloom, but not when I want to take pictures, dammit.

Anyway, we took the El back to River North this morning in search of Portillo’s. I love the El; it gives a great view of Chicago’s backyard, which is strangely appealing. Portillo’s italian beef was pretty good too. We also stopped into the biggest freaking McDonald’s in the world across the street. It had an escalator. Set your expectations accordingly.

 

At some point this afternoon, the annoying brake chime (the one that alerts you that the emergency brake is on) started going off constantly. It never really got any better. We headed north that night, into Evanston and Skokie and Des Plaines in search of pizza and car repair places.

  

We found our pizza at a bowling alley. It was good. The chime was still going when we got home. I began to suspect there was something amiss.

Chicago

Breakfast at the Golden Nugget is a good thing. We did Clark Street and parts of Broadway before driving the length of North Avenue to the western suburbs, on the advice of Rae and Rob. It was a good way to get a sort of “big picture” experience. It also allowed us to hit a suburban Target for some necessities.

    

On the way back in, we stopped at the Sears Tower and looked out from the 110th (0r 109th or whatever) floor, which is about as high up as you can get in a building in the United States. It was pretty cool, and I called my mom from up there, since it was her birthday. Predictably, the call was dropped midway through. That seems to happen a lot in Chicago.

  

We circled back to the motel in order to get showered and ready for dinner at Moto.

Moto is definitely an experience. What could be a very pretentious place gets marks for not taking itself too seriously. The food was interesting, based as it was on assorted chemical reactions, etc. In observance of pizza night, there was a pizza soup served. And we got a tour of the kitchen and its lasers, I’ll leave the actual specific review to my hubby, though; I’m better at deconstructing diners.

Chicago

I woke up excited. Chicago is one of my three or so favorite American cities (the others being Los Angeles and a third which varies from year to year). I love to explore Chicago.

  

We wanted desperately to have breakfast at the Ohio House Coffee Shop. It looked wonderful. We found it, went in, had a seat, got menus, and then…nothing. No one would take our order. No one would bring us silverware or drinks. No one would acknowledge our presence. The waitresses were chatty and attentive to the patrons at the counter, most of whom they seemed to know. But no one would say a word to us. After a reasonable amount of time, we left.

Apparently, if they don’t know you, you aren’t allowed to eat at the Ohio House Coffee Shop in Chicago. So they can pretty much rot in hell. We ended up at a Potbelly around the corner, which was OK, if vaguely unsatisfying.

   

We took a rainy walk around The Loop and visited Marshall Field’s (no, it will never be Macy’s) and Carson’s just for architectural purposes. We oohed and aahed over the Louis Sullivan buildings and the more modern treats as well. It was a very photo-intensive day.

 

OK. I cheated and grouped all the photos from The Loop here together. It seemed to make sense, and that’s why we’re wearing different clothes (and standing in vastly different weather) in some of them.

    

    

    

    

I was very excited to have finally seen the Bob Newhart building, not to mention the 15,000th 7-Eleven location in the world. Both have plaques.

 

We had dinner with my old friend Rae (who I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years, I think) and her Rob at a bar whose name escapes me right now. But it was good.

Cincinnati to Chicago

  

After being a bit horrified by the tube of Anal-Ese we found on the headboard of our bed (no, it wasn’t ours), we checked out of our nondescript motel and had a similarly nondescript fast food breakfast before briefly exploring downtown Cincinnati.

I really want to spend more time here. It’s one of those midwestern cities I love, the ones that used to be much bigger and more important than they are now, and look it. Most people know Cincinnati — if they know it at all — as the headquarters of Kroger and the home of WKRP. But it has a pretty massive and attractive downtown area surrounded by interesting neighborhoods in varying stages between scary decay and scary gentrification.

We also found another great radio station that played the Dead Milkmen and the Pixies, and which has apparently switched to a considerably less tolerable format since our trip.

  

After a stop by Pamida, we made our way to Indianapolis to have lunch with my friend Bob. Those of you who have been reading the site for a long time may remember that Bob made the suggestion that led to my first online cross-country road trip in 1997. Thus, Indy has always been a necessary stop on any trip that takes me in the general vicinity.

We had lunch at an MCL Cafeteria that was much better than the one in Columbus, and then took the nickel tour of Indianapolis, including my favorite old Kroger on Tenth Street.

We arrived in Chicago to find that every road into the city was under construction. It’s amazing the detrimental effect that having only two lanes of freeway capacity into the third largest city in America will have, even on a Sunday night. We finally made it to our Best Western in the Rogers Park/Loyola area, and were amazed at how nice (and cheap) the room was. We had dinner nearby, stopped by Dominicks for provisions, and called it a night.

Winston-Salem to Cincinnati

  

As first days tend to be, this was our day to cover a lot of distance without a lot of stops. We drove ever northward through the day, stopping for lunch at a very uninspiring Bob Evans in Wytheville VA and for dinner at a slightly more inspiring Big Boy in Maysville KY.

Highlights for the day included lots of fall color, a nuclear power plant outside Charleston WV, and Maysville KY itself, a surprisingly cute Ohio River town we imagined our mothers would both like very much. We also stumbled onto some really cool radio station in Cincinnati that played everything from Big Band to 1930s jazz to pop standards.

Cincinnati itself looked worthy of exploration as well.

Road Trip on the Horizon

Only four more days till the Great Midwestern Road Trip of 2006. Any suggestions of things to see along the way, particularly dumpy diners, vintage supermarkets and shopping centers, and relatively safe examples of urban decay are always appreciated. Our social calendar is already full, alas — or at least as full as misanthropes like us are ever likely to let it get.