Christmas Trip to Chicago

Yesterday Travalon and I went to Chicago to visit some of my relatives, and we brought them Wisconsin beer and cheese. First we visited my aunt and uncle in the western suburbs, and we all went to a pizza place for lunch and had that famous deep dish Chicago pizza. My cousin joined us with her baby daughter and one of her sons, so that was a lot of fun. My aunt took this picture of Travalon and me in their driveway.

Then we went to visit another uncle at the Hemingway House in Oak Park, where he is a tour guide. He had lots of fascinating stories, and I thought the house was so beautiful inside. Here is a picture in the living room, of the piano and Christmas tree.

This photo is in the library. The two certificates were from Ernest Hemingway's grandfathers' service in the Union Army during the Civil War, and also I love the wallpaper.

This is the dining room table. I just love the colors!

This is also in the dining room. You can see the roses in the plaster edging, and the lace curtains that go all the way down to the floor. (The curtains are not original but are well-made replicas.)

And this is the carpeting in the dining room, featuring just an edge of Travalon's shoe. I took another picture without his shoe, but it wasn't quite as good as this one.

Then we went out to dinner with that uncle and aunt, at a fancy restaurant called the Hemingway Bistro. My aunt told me that in their neighborhood there were luminaries all up and down the sidewalk, and my uncle sent me this photo.

After that Travalon and I went downtown, and some of the buildings were lit up red and green so that was pretty, but the decorations on the streets seemed to be trees lit with white lights. Is there a more interesting part of downtown? Otherwise I would say Martinsville, population maybe forty, does a better job. Even the tollbooths as we headed out of town had more colorful lights! We did stop in Rockford, and they had some lovely lights downtown. Here is a short video of a sparkly Christmas tree in downtown Rockford.

We got home really late, overslept, and had to go to a later Mass. Then we went to the pond with all the birds on it, and today I got a really good photo. Can you see that there are even cranes? It's like a big bird party! And I love the sun sparkling on the water.

Then we went to Castle Rock Conservancy and finally found the pond! Check it out - it looks like there's a tiny island in the center of it.

We went on a path we hadn't been able to take before, since it always seemed to be flooded, and it went right by Six Mile Creek.

It was such a gorgeous day that I hated to go inside and play our gig at the airport, but the area where we sat was flooded in sunlight. I sang and played, sometimes at the same time. I like to think that maybe if some of those travelers were scared of flying, hearing a favorite Christmas carol gave them some comfort. One guy sang along on all three verses of "What Child Is This" with me. Hardingfele and I weren't sure what to make of this sparkly weird tree in the airport.

Then Hardingfele came over to my house and checked out all my crazy instruments. Now that my Snark tuner has new batteries, I have no more excuse for not tuning them all and learning to play them. Anyway, I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be doing in the next few days, so a Merry Christmas to all my readers.

Famous Hat