The trips are coming fast and furious right now…This weekend my husband and I went to Chicago together for a friend’s 50th birthday party. On Saturday morning I drove the 16-year-old to a robotics tournament, came home, waited for our weekend sitter to get there, then we took off for the airport and a 10:30 a.m. flight to O’Hare. After landing, we went to our hotel (The Hoxton), then walked out to try to get lunch, and realized that we had inadvertently arrived in Chicago on one of the biggest party days of the year.
Yup, it was the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day. In my mind, this wasn’t going to be a thing, because St. Patrick’s Day is Tuesday. But the city of Chicago decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (observed) this weekend. There were crowds of people everywhere in green. We finally found a spot to eat lunch at a pub where the waiter confessed that he normally tries to take this day off each year, but he was off his shift by 3:00 so it wouldn’t be so bad. I have to say, it was pretty bad. We took an Uber to the art museum, but we could barely get there with the crowds. The museum had gates up and guards to keep people from trying to go inside to use the bathroom.
But we had tickets! So we went in (in the driving snow…because yes, March is still winter in Chicago) and spent about an hour in the Thorne Rooms. This is my favorite place in the Art Institute — 68 miniature rooms showing interior design from different periods in history. I particularly liked the Pennsylvania rooms, and anything showing musical instruments or sewing. My husband indulged me looking at every single room. Then we saw the special Matisse exhibit, found a painting Monet did in Norway (I didn’t know he’d traveled there) and stopped for coffee at the end when we were fading.
Then it was on to the 50th birthday party. They’d hired an event planner and everyone had done a really good job. There was great food and then they moved us to a new room for dancing. Everyone had been sent a video of a dance to learn before (I confess I had not learned the dance as it is my husband’s friend and he had received the emails and I don’t think it entered his consciousness that there was a dance to be learned) so it was quite a scene. I only lasted to about 10:30 p.m., because it was 11:30 p.m. my time, but hey.
Sunday morning my husband and I had something of a slow start due to the time change. Then we went to the airport together and ate breakfast before separating (flying different directions). O’Hare was chaotic because flights were getting canceled left and right due to the big storm in the midwest. The line to the customer service counter snaked down the whole terminal. But my flight to Philly took off only about 30 minutes late. So I was home in time to get plunged back in to driving to tennis lessons. Our sitter managed to execute against my two pages of typed logistics (there were a lot of unknowns of whether the kid doing the robotics tournament would qualify for day 2 or not…he did, so stuff had to change). This is what weekends are like around here!
It’s been quite a week – I was thinking as I was planning my week some 168 hours ago that two highlights would be a sunrise run along the Atlantic and seeing the Thorne Rooms. Both happened – and both were amazing. I will definitely remember this little chunk of time. Add in the Golden Gate Bridge last Thursday and wow. Travel is a total pain but it does lead to memorable experiences.
