And yet last weekend found Karyn and me in Chicago, happily commemorating our first anniversary.
The two of us have done a whole lot of traveling together in that year. The list of destinations for our trips includes: Columbus, Detroit, Washington DC, Toronto, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Pymatuning Lake, Sandusky, Steubenville (yes, Steubenville - a day trip for a concert by Typhoon's Kyle Morton, and one of my favorites of the whole bunch), Put-in-Bay, Los Angeles, and now Chicago. Quite a year of traveling, and the year was quite a journey for both of us in other ways too. This last trip was perhaps the best of all, so I decided to write about it.
Karyn likes to come up with hashtags for trips. For this trip she decided on #yearofthecats, which I quite liked. The meaning of the "year" part is obvious; as for the "cats" part, many of you are probably aware that we have a lot of cats. Eight cats, to be precise - my Eponine and Gavroche, plus Karyn's Grady, Hogan, Rupert, Martin, Rusty, and Tortellini. One big happy family!
We said goodbye to our cats and headed out to Chicago on a cold and windy Friday morning. The weather we had for the weekend was not particularly nice, but you don't go to Chicago in November for the weather. At least the high winds of Friday did not stick around for the rest of the weekend.
One of the big themes of the weekend was delicious food. This started with a brief stop at Eataly after we finished getting settled into our posh accommodations at the Loews Downtown Chicago hotel. Eataly is a massive two-story market full of Italian food for eating in, taking out, or grocery shopping. We were both in awe of the place. We didn't have much time to spend there that day so we vowed we'd return before we had to leave town. That we did on Sunday afternoon, our last excursion before departing, and I'm pretty sure that Sunday visit led to the largest grocery bill of my life, but I have no regrets!
After we grabbed a quick bite, we headed to a nearby barber shop where Karyn got a haircut. She was pleased to find a place that did not discriminate by gender on pricing.
I wanted to go eat in Chinatown at some point during the weekend, something I've greatly enjoyed doing on several previous Chicago visits, so we caught a train there early Friday evening. Before dinner, I decided I wanted to stop in at a gift shop I'd previously visited with Cara. I recalled how on that previous visit, we had bought one of Cara's numerous Chococat plushes. Chococat is another character from Sanrio, the company responsible for Hello Kitty, but Chococat is not nearly as well known. Cara adored Chococat, who she nicknamed "Boco." I honestly did not go into that shop last weekend with the intention of purchasing more Chococat merchandise, but once inside I naturally started looking for Chococats as I always had when visiting any sort of Asian gift shop either with Cara or by myself in search of a gift for Cara. And I was saddened to see that there were absolutely no Chococat plushes in the shop.
As I said, Chococat is not as popular as Hello Kitty, and there was never a great abundance of different Chococat products at any given time. But it now appears that Sanrio has almost completely stopped producing Chococat merchandise. And that makes me very sad.
Karyn has also come to like Chococat. We have a gigantic Chococat pillow on the sofa and she has said that it's seemingly impossible to lie on it and not fall asleep. Seeing my desire to find a Chococat in the gift shop, Karyn joined my search, and I have to say I was deeply moved by her great determination to find something, anything, with that familiar wide-eyed feline face on it.
Ultimately we did succeed in finding three Chococat-branded items: a phone case, a pocket-sized notebook, and, best of all (and discovered by Karyn), my new wallet!
You see, for most of this year I have been saying that I needed a new wallet because my old one (a pretty standard-looking leather wallet) is very worn out. And from time to time we'd be out somewhere and see some wallets and I'd look at them but I hadn't come across one that caught my fancy. So when Karyn presented this wallet to me in that Chinatown gift shop I instantly realized that this was exactly what I had been looking for. I think she was surprised at first at my intent to actually use a Chococat wallet as my everyday wallet. "You're a very confident man," she said. True, I suppose.
It goes without saying that it's because of how much Cara liked Chococat, but it's still hard to exactly put into words just how happy it made me to get this wallet, and I'm very grateful to Karyn for finding it. I told her that it might be one of my favorite things I've ever bought, and I really meant that.
So finding the Chococat wallet was for me one of the highlights of the trip, but it was one of many highlights. The stop at the gift shop was followed by a delicious dinner at MingHin Cuisine, and after dinner, because it was right there I could not resist getting a bubble tea from Joy Yee, as I've done on more than one previous visit to Chicago's Chinatown. We then headed back to the hotel.
Saturday was a very busy day for the two of us and it was a very wonderful day as well. It started with another great meal, breakfast at Cupitol Coffee & Eatery. After a brief stop back at the hotel, we headed out for a day spent wandering the streets of Chicago and enjoying various holiday festivities. It was a dreary day, and a light rain fell for much of the morning and early afternoon, leading us to remark that at least it wasn't windy like the day before.
We began the journey from our hotel by heading south across the river and toward Millennium Park. Now, the one unfortunate thing about our hotel's location was the skyscraper obnoxiously and aggressively emblazoned with the letters TRUMP staring across the river at us. As we crossed the river, Karyn paused to take a photo of the skyscraper, its upper levels disappearing into the misty sky. It would have been quite a pretty sight if not for those letters:
Karyn posted the image to Facebook and called it "The Tower of Kefka in real life." She had to explain to me the Final Fantasy VI reference she was making, because I knew nothing about that video game. As she told me, Kefka was the game's villain and was an evil, clownish, self-obsessed nihilist character who pretty much destroyed the world, and built a massive tower from the wreckage of all that he'd destroyed. And apparently in the early part of the game Kefka seemed like a minor threat worthy more of mockery than anything else, but then in a surprising twist he rose to power and went on to wreak enormous destruction. Good comparison, right? I really enjoyed listening to Karyn describe this as we walked.
At Millennium Park we of course enjoyed seeing "The Bean," although the weather was far less than ideal for taking in the scenery.
Fortunately our main reason for visiting Millennium Park that day, the Millennium Park Art Market, was held inside a giant tent. We went there with the intention of doing some holiday shopping and also buying something for our new apartment. We found plenty of great offerings to choose from! I really was amazed by the tremendous display of creativity and talent and effort from all the art students whose wares were displayed. I was also struck by how much of the artwork, almost all produced by people younger than Karyn and me, clearly reflected the world in which our generation and the generation after ours is growing up. The uncertain future in a society and a planet plagued by climate change and growing inequality and other ills. The technological advances that have so dramatically changed the ways in which we communicate and interface with the world. The never-ending struggle for basic human rights and dignity fought by members of various marginalized groups and the growing sense of solidarity among members of those groups and their allies in a nation where reactionary forces have seized power and are desperately and viciously trying to stem and even reverse that tide of progress.
We ended up making purchases from a number of the artists. When we checked out I remarked that the total bill was actually not bad at all for all the great stuff we were getting. And I always like to support small independent artists like those at the market. One of my favorite items we bought was this poster by a young woman named Meha Ray:
She has a series of robot illustrations and Karyn suggested that she should make a book based on her robot character.
Our next stop after the art market was Macy's, where Karyn suggested we go get our picture taken with Santa Claus. While waiting in line, we were amused by the fact that we were the only ones without children, but it was fun! When Santa asked what we wanted for Christmas, Karyn said a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl win and I said world peace. Santa said world peace might be easier.
We ended up spending quite a while in Macy's, where we both bought (among other things) much-needed new winter gloves. By the time we returned to the street, it had thankfully stopped raining. Our next stop was Christkindlmarket, a German-themed outdoor holiday market with plenty more artwork and plenty more delicious food. The cheese melted directly off the wheel onto a toasted baguette was a revelation.
We couldn't resist making a few more purchases, including these adorable hand-carved wooden animals, a cat and a snail:
(I picked the snail because it was the closest thing to a slug. If anyone ever comes across a wooden sea slug, please let me know.)
The main attraction that weekend in Chicago was the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival and we next made our way to the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue where we joined the throngs who were waiting for the festive parade and the accompanying lighting of the trees. It really was quite cool to see all the Christmas lights on our block's worth of trees simultaneously spring to life at the command of Mickey Mouse who was passing by on a parade float. I also greatly enjoyed seeing the high school marching bands in the parade (including one from Akron) and, of course, Santa Claus and his reindeer on the final float. It was a chilly night to be standing outside for that long, but we had fun! One of my favorite parts, to be honest, was seeing the excited reactions of all the children near us.
After the parade we returned to our hotel, but our busy day was still not over. The last item on the agenda was a late night anniversary dinner at Gilt Bar, a restaurant Karyn had found. She said that she had picked it because, from the pictures, it seemed to have the most similar vibe to La Cave du Vin's dimly lit interior. It was a good choice! The roasted garlic appetizer was amazing, our salad and our pasta entrees were great, and our meal concluded with an enormous and delicious slice of carrot cake on the house. While dining, our conversation turned to everything we had been through together over the course of that year. It really is remarkable. And the trip to Chicago was a perfect way to celebrate that year.
At some point earlier in the weekend, we had walked by the original Pizzeria Uno on Ohio Street in downtown Chicago and then just up the street its sister restaurant Pizzeria Due. My thoughts instantly turned to my first visit to Chicago, for a cross country meet as a sophomore in college in the fall of 2002, and how the team had dined together at Pizzeria Due (Uno having had a longer wait). I looked up from the street and could see the room where I remembered sitting all those years ago. Karyn wondered what I was looking at and I explained it to her and how it was hard to believe all that time had passed.
In March 2011 Cara and I took a trip to Chicago and I wrote a blog post about it and one thing I wrote, regarding our visit to the park where the aforementioned cross country meet was held, was: "Going to a place that you've visited before and remember well but haven't seen in years is an interesting experience. Memories rush back at you. In a way, I'm a different person now than I was then, yet there's obviously a very strong connection with my past self." That's even more true now. I guess I've always had that keen interest in staying in touch with my own past. But it all has an extra poignancy now after all the things that have happened in my life in between that 2011 visit and today. And reading something you wrote many years ago can be a similarly interesting experience to visiting a place you haven't seen in years, one of the reasons I'm glad I've kept this blog.
My and Karyn's visit to Chicago had to end on Sunday, but the good times and good eating were not quite over when we got up that morning. For brunch we decided to try a restaurant called Beatrix and there we found what was not only perhaps the best meal of the weekend, but also almost undoubtedly the best customer service we've ever experienced. Karyn decided to order the pecan French toast special, while I opted for lemon pancakes and a side of brown sugar bacon. Before ordering, Karyn had told our waitress (named Kelsey) that she was thinking about the cauliflower grits, which Kelsey had recommended as her favorite. When our food came out, the first item was the cauliflower grits. We hadn't ordered that, we said, surprised. The rest of the order was correct, so the server returned to the kitchen with the cauliflower grits. A minute later Kelsey came back to the table with the grits and explained that she had wanted us to be able to try them, so she had added them (the full size plate) to our order, and they were on her!
And that wasn't all. We both expressed our tremendous gratitude, and after we finished eating Karyn told Kelsey how it was our anniversary weekend and this meal had been a perfect conclusion to it, and then Kelsey brought us a slice of pecan pumpkin pie to go, also on her. It really was an extra special way to cap off a very special weekend.
After brunch we made that final excursion to Eataly, and then headed to the car and made the drive back home to Cleveland, where we returned very tired but happy to our new apartment and our eight cats.
One of the big themes of the weekend was delicious food. This started with a brief stop at Eataly after we finished getting settled into our posh accommodations at the Loews Downtown Chicago hotel. Eataly is a massive two-story market full of Italian food for eating in, taking out, or grocery shopping. We were both in awe of the place. We didn't have much time to spend there that day so we vowed we'd return before we had to leave town. That we did on Sunday afternoon, our last excursion before departing, and I'm pretty sure that Sunday visit led to the largest grocery bill of my life, but I have no regrets!
After we grabbed a quick bite, we headed to a nearby barber shop where Karyn got a haircut. She was pleased to find a place that did not discriminate by gender on pricing.
I wanted to go eat in Chinatown at some point during the weekend, something I've greatly enjoyed doing on several previous Chicago visits, so we caught a train there early Friday evening. Before dinner, I decided I wanted to stop in at a gift shop I'd previously visited with Cara. I recalled how on that previous visit, we had bought one of Cara's numerous Chococat plushes. Chococat is another character from Sanrio, the company responsible for Hello Kitty, but Chococat is not nearly as well known. Cara adored Chococat, who she nicknamed "Boco." I honestly did not go into that shop last weekend with the intention of purchasing more Chococat merchandise, but once inside I naturally started looking for Chococats as I always had when visiting any sort of Asian gift shop either with Cara or by myself in search of a gift for Cara. And I was saddened to see that there were absolutely no Chococat plushes in the shop.
As I said, Chococat is not as popular as Hello Kitty, and there was never a great abundance of different Chococat products at any given time. But it now appears that Sanrio has almost completely stopped producing Chococat merchandise. And that makes me very sad.
Karyn has also come to like Chococat. We have a gigantic Chococat pillow on the sofa and she has said that it's seemingly impossible to lie on it and not fall asleep. Seeing my desire to find a Chococat in the gift shop, Karyn joined my search, and I have to say I was deeply moved by her great determination to find something, anything, with that familiar wide-eyed feline face on it.
Ultimately we did succeed in finding three Chococat-branded items: a phone case, a pocket-sized notebook, and, best of all (and discovered by Karyn), my new wallet!
You see, for most of this year I have been saying that I needed a new wallet because my old one (a pretty standard-looking leather wallet) is very worn out. And from time to time we'd be out somewhere and see some wallets and I'd look at them but I hadn't come across one that caught my fancy. So when Karyn presented this wallet to me in that Chinatown gift shop I instantly realized that this was exactly what I had been looking for. I think she was surprised at first at my intent to actually use a Chococat wallet as my everyday wallet. "You're a very confident man," she said. True, I suppose.
It goes without saying that it's because of how much Cara liked Chococat, but it's still hard to exactly put into words just how happy it made me to get this wallet, and I'm very grateful to Karyn for finding it. I told her that it might be one of my favorite things I've ever bought, and I really meant that.
So finding the Chococat wallet was for me one of the highlights of the trip, but it was one of many highlights. The stop at the gift shop was followed by a delicious dinner at MingHin Cuisine, and after dinner, because it was right there I could not resist getting a bubble tea from Joy Yee, as I've done on more than one previous visit to Chicago's Chinatown. We then headed back to the hotel.
Saturday was a very busy day for the two of us and it was a very wonderful day as well. It started with another great meal, breakfast at Cupitol Coffee & Eatery. After a brief stop back at the hotel, we headed out for a day spent wandering the streets of Chicago and enjoying various holiday festivities. It was a dreary day, and a light rain fell for much of the morning and early afternoon, leading us to remark that at least it wasn't windy like the day before.
We began the journey from our hotel by heading south across the river and toward Millennium Park. Now, the one unfortunate thing about our hotel's location was the skyscraper obnoxiously and aggressively emblazoned with the letters TRUMP staring across the river at us. As we crossed the river, Karyn paused to take a photo of the skyscraper, its upper levels disappearing into the misty sky. It would have been quite a pretty sight if not for those letters:
Karyn posted the image to Facebook and called it "The Tower of Kefka in real life." She had to explain to me the Final Fantasy VI reference she was making, because I knew nothing about that video game. As she told me, Kefka was the game's villain and was an evil, clownish, self-obsessed nihilist character who pretty much destroyed the world, and built a massive tower from the wreckage of all that he'd destroyed. And apparently in the early part of the game Kefka seemed like a minor threat worthy more of mockery than anything else, but then in a surprising twist he rose to power and went on to wreak enormous destruction. Good comparison, right? I really enjoyed listening to Karyn describe this as we walked.
At Millennium Park we of course enjoyed seeing "The Bean," although the weather was far less than ideal for taking in the scenery.
Fortunately our main reason for visiting Millennium Park that day, the Millennium Park Art Market, was held inside a giant tent. We went there with the intention of doing some holiday shopping and also buying something for our new apartment. We found plenty of great offerings to choose from! I really was amazed by the tremendous display of creativity and talent and effort from all the art students whose wares were displayed. I was also struck by how much of the artwork, almost all produced by people younger than Karyn and me, clearly reflected the world in which our generation and the generation after ours is growing up. The uncertain future in a society and a planet plagued by climate change and growing inequality and other ills. The technological advances that have so dramatically changed the ways in which we communicate and interface with the world. The never-ending struggle for basic human rights and dignity fought by members of various marginalized groups and the growing sense of solidarity among members of those groups and their allies in a nation where reactionary forces have seized power and are desperately and viciously trying to stem and even reverse that tide of progress.
We ended up making purchases from a number of the artists. When we checked out I remarked that the total bill was actually not bad at all for all the great stuff we were getting. And I always like to support small independent artists like those at the market. One of my favorite items we bought was this poster by a young woman named Meha Ray:
She has a series of robot illustrations and Karyn suggested that she should make a book based on her robot character.
Our next stop after the art market was Macy's, where Karyn suggested we go get our picture taken with Santa Claus. While waiting in line, we were amused by the fact that we were the only ones without children, but it was fun! When Santa asked what we wanted for Christmas, Karyn said a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl win and I said world peace. Santa said world peace might be easier.
We ended up spending quite a while in Macy's, where we both bought (among other things) much-needed new winter gloves. By the time we returned to the street, it had thankfully stopped raining. Our next stop was Christkindlmarket, a German-themed outdoor holiday market with plenty more artwork and plenty more delicious food. The cheese melted directly off the wheel onto a toasted baguette was a revelation.
We couldn't resist making a few more purchases, including these adorable hand-carved wooden animals, a cat and a snail:
(I picked the snail because it was the closest thing to a slug. If anyone ever comes across a wooden sea slug, please let me know.)
The main attraction that weekend in Chicago was the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival and we next made our way to the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue where we joined the throngs who were waiting for the festive parade and the accompanying lighting of the trees. It really was quite cool to see all the Christmas lights on our block's worth of trees simultaneously spring to life at the command of Mickey Mouse who was passing by on a parade float. I also greatly enjoyed seeing the high school marching bands in the parade (including one from Akron) and, of course, Santa Claus and his reindeer on the final float. It was a chilly night to be standing outside for that long, but we had fun! One of my favorite parts, to be honest, was seeing the excited reactions of all the children near us.
After the parade we returned to our hotel, but our busy day was still not over. The last item on the agenda was a late night anniversary dinner at Gilt Bar, a restaurant Karyn had found. She said that she had picked it because, from the pictures, it seemed to have the most similar vibe to La Cave du Vin's dimly lit interior. It was a good choice! The roasted garlic appetizer was amazing, our salad and our pasta entrees were great, and our meal concluded with an enormous and delicious slice of carrot cake on the house. While dining, our conversation turned to everything we had been through together over the course of that year. It really is remarkable. And the trip to Chicago was a perfect way to celebrate that year.
At some point earlier in the weekend, we had walked by the original Pizzeria Uno on Ohio Street in downtown Chicago and then just up the street its sister restaurant Pizzeria Due. My thoughts instantly turned to my first visit to Chicago, for a cross country meet as a sophomore in college in the fall of 2002, and how the team had dined together at Pizzeria Due (Uno having had a longer wait). I looked up from the street and could see the room where I remembered sitting all those years ago. Karyn wondered what I was looking at and I explained it to her and how it was hard to believe all that time had passed.
In March 2011 Cara and I took a trip to Chicago and I wrote a blog post about it and one thing I wrote, regarding our visit to the park where the aforementioned cross country meet was held, was: "Going to a place that you've visited before and remember well but haven't seen in years is an interesting experience. Memories rush back at you. In a way, I'm a different person now than I was then, yet there's obviously a very strong connection with my past self." That's even more true now. I guess I've always had that keen interest in staying in touch with my own past. But it all has an extra poignancy now after all the things that have happened in my life in between that 2011 visit and today. And reading something you wrote many years ago can be a similarly interesting experience to visiting a place you haven't seen in years, one of the reasons I'm glad I've kept this blog.
My and Karyn's visit to Chicago had to end on Sunday, but the good times and good eating were not quite over when we got up that morning. For brunch we decided to try a restaurant called Beatrix and there we found what was not only perhaps the best meal of the weekend, but also almost undoubtedly the best customer service we've ever experienced. Karyn decided to order the pecan French toast special, while I opted for lemon pancakes and a side of brown sugar bacon. Before ordering, Karyn had told our waitress (named Kelsey) that she was thinking about the cauliflower grits, which Kelsey had recommended as her favorite. When our food came out, the first item was the cauliflower grits. We hadn't ordered that, we said, surprised. The rest of the order was correct, so the server returned to the kitchen with the cauliflower grits. A minute later Kelsey came back to the table with the grits and explained that she had wanted us to be able to try them, so she had added them (the full size plate) to our order, and they were on her!
And that wasn't all. We both expressed our tremendous gratitude, and after we finished eating Karyn told Kelsey how it was our anniversary weekend and this meal had been a perfect conclusion to it, and then Kelsey brought us a slice of pecan pumpkin pie to go, also on her. It really was an extra special way to cap off a very special weekend.
After brunch we made that final excursion to Eataly, and then headed to the car and made the drive back home to Cleveland, where we returned very tired but happy to our new apartment and our eight cats.
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