Welcome home!

Welcome back, can't wait to hear all about it.

Welcome home!

Welcome home, you guys! Missed you muchly.

Welcome back! Can't wait to see your pics! :)

Well, we've still got a LONG way to go before we manage to pare down our obscene amount of photos into a tolerable sized album, so I'll just post a summary of highlights.

Chicago
* Started day 1 in Oak Park, site of Frank Lloyd Wright's first home and studio, as well as having the largest collection of existing Wright-designe homes. The walking tour of the neighborhood and the guided tour of the home and studio were stellar, and we couldn't have asked for a better day. I will be harboring unrealistic desires to live in that neighborhood for a long time.
* Our hotel was in the water tower district, just a block away from the Hancock. So night one we had dinner at the Drake Bros., whcih was having a steak sale, buy 1 steak, get a second for $.01. Weird, but I wasn't going to argue. Then we went to the Hancock observatory for a night view of the city. I can't stress how weird it is to not see a hill or a mountain anywhere.
* Museum of Contemporary Art had a wonderful exhibit of rock and roll/post-punk art from late 60's on. Great stuff, well put together. The one installation that stuck with me was a room whose floor was tiled with vintage vinyl (White Album, Tommy, etc.). It felt so...wrong to be walking on them. And then there was the group of school kids who walked in with their docent, looked at the floor and said, "CD's!" :eek:
*River North gallery district. I could spend a month there alone. Galleries and stores full of interest and intrigue, whether I liked the individual art or not.
* Deep dish stuffed pizza = fantastic. (Gino's East, if anyone would like to know)
* Oh what a beautiful racket the El makes!
* Caught a Second City show that was hillariously brilliant.
* Museum of Science and Industry - surreal to finally be in the coal mine as described by both of our parents our whole lives. Creepy to be on the top floor with informative computer displays about basic sciences that literally have not been updated since 1985. A video of Julia Childs making "Primordial Soup." Yikes.
* Wrigley. There wouldn't have been a game to attend even if I had gotten tickets, but we did at least have to walk around the Field. It's beautiful, next trip will definitely be during the season.

And that's just the quick highlights. With the caveat that I have no idea how I'd survive winter, that's a city I could live in.

I'm glad we did Chicago first as a warm up to New York. I hadn't been to NY for about 15 years, so I couldn't trust my memory 100%, but it was may impression that Chicago was far less dense in terms of the hustle and bustle of people traffic. Boy was I right, which gives Chicago a leg up in my book. I adore visiting Manhattan and its nonstop manic energy, but would prefer the relative calm of Chicago for long term living.

Anyway....

New York
* Lucked out big time with weather. First two days were positively gorgeous, sunny, and warm. Later in the week it got cloudy and muggy, but didn't rain as the weather reports kept threatening until a small bit on Friday.
* Liberty and Ellis, powerful as ever. We didn't figure out the song and dance about reserving a time slot to get into the base to see the museum or climb to her foot, but whatever. Just being on the island is experience enough and I think I just would have been pining for the days of the crown visits anyway. As descendants of the very people from whom come the mythos of that statue and that island, it's feels very personal to be there. And, even accounting for the extra-positive spin that was surly put on the information, it's nice to learn that for all of the exhaustion and confusion that the immigrants surely went through, the process was (at least until quotas came around) weighted on the side of helping rather than turning away as many people as they could.
* Oh that the Great Park might have even a fraction of what Central Park has.
* The Met, awesome as ever, but bloody hell do I hate the layout. We got so lost in there. By the time we got there, we had long since given up on trying to take it easy, it's just not in us. Too much to see and do to slow down and take our time. But the Met definitely put us over the top on the exhaustion scale. But oh so worth it. I'll let the photos (eventually) speak to the highlights there.
* MOMA/Gougenheim. We just can't get enough moderm/contemporary art. It fuels us and the whole time all we could think was, "Why don't we go to museums at home more?!" MOMA has an awesome design/product exhibit with every type of commercial design you can think of. Furniture, cars, typography (Helvetica's 40 years old!), a print out of a ca. 1995 IBM DRAM chip layout. Drool.
* Food. Got a great slice of pizza (Marco Polo pizza, SE corner of 92nd and Madison, near the Goug), corned beef and cheesecake at Lindy's, great meal and drink at Opia (second floor lounge/restaurant at 57th and Lex), and an otherwise perfect filet at "Above" in the Times Square Hilton that for reasons beyond me had some sort of mayonnaise sauce on it. Hooray food.
* Broadway. Spring Awakening was really fun. Issues with the last act being loose and rushed, and they short-shrifted the gay side plot leaving it at pure comic relief instead of challenging the audience. But the music is great, the performers were energetic and really talented. And my Young Frankenstein review is elsewhere.
* Empire State building kinda sucked. Not only was it cloudy, but the staff was surly, over-directing us when we didn't need it and failing to help us when we did, rudely yelling at us for going the "wrong way" when the "wrong way" meant going straight for an elevator instead of listening to a stupid sales pitch for stupid blue-screened photos. Much better experiences at Hancock and Sears Tower in Chicago.
* Driving. Never drive in Manhattan. Especially after spending 4 days as a pedestrian where traffic lights are lovely decoration to be largely ignored, not a good habit to be in behind the wheel. More stress than I needed.
* Ghostland Observatory at Webster Hall was outstanding. Brutally awesome stage presence, stellar venue. So glad we did it.

Gah, this was supposed to be a quick summary! I haven't even gotten into our Detroit and Boston side trips!! But that's a pretty good overview. I'm highly satisfied. Taking for granted the few bits of poor logistical planning we did regarding the overall travel schedule, I don't think I'd have changed a thing. There is of course a laundry list of things we never got to, but those are easily filed under "next time".

Oh, and on a final note, on the last day, taking the train from Boston back to NY, we FINALLY got to see fall colors, which were late in coming to everywhere else we'd been. Just...wow.

Phew, okay, I'm done, I swear.

I was hoping you'd post it so I wouldn't have to. :D

Susan and I were leaving New York (from a much shorter visit) just as you were arriving. It is funny how many of our experiences paralleled yours. If yu don't mind me piggy-backing on your thread:

The weather was amazing while we were there. cool, crisp fall air.
We actually made the rezzies to go in the base. With that privilege, we also received the honor of waiting in another 1-1/2 hour line for a second security check (after the initial hour wait to get onto the boat. For what we got to see, it was NOT worth the extra wait. Because of the additional wait, we did not get to see Ellis (for which I am now disappointed), and we ended up missing our Sunday matinée for Avenue Q (though they did honor our tickets for the evening performance).
I never understood the fuss about Central Park until I walked through it.
I agree on the layout - especially with the one large section closed for remodeling. But I could easily spend a couple of (full) days in that museum!
OMG, the food! Whether it is the bagel and coffee at the diner across from our hotel to the wonderful steak at Bond 45 (food always tastes a little better when someone else pays for it) to the AMAZING BBQ at Virgils (44th at Broadway - just off of Times Square) and even the pretzels from the street vendors - Manhattan is all about the food.
I loved Avenue Q. And I am always amazed at how small the theatres are in NY. Also on our list of contenders were Spamalot and The Putnam County 25th Annual Spelling Bee. And while we were there, we also thought Xanadu might be fun!

By the end of our two days there, I was finally starting to get the hang of the subway.

And after we left, I really had a strong desire to live there for a year or so. I think one winter would be all I could handle. But there is so much to experience there, I think I would need a year to experience it all.

Sorry for the highjack!

If you want to do the base of the statute with less fuss, you have to be in the first group of the day.

Love Virgil's! You know you're getting serious when your napkin is actually a hand towel.

You might want to try Blue Smoke next time. There's a bit of a BBQ war between the two. Blue Smoke is more KC style.