Readers have been clamoring for pictures of my Chicago trip and I must not disappoint the eager hordes! (Translation: two of my 6.5 readers asked for pictures, and since I can hardly afford to lose readers, I'd better post some.)

Unfortunately, anyone hoping to see a multitude of fabulous pictures will, in fact, be disappointed. Because, alas and alack, the only cameras that came to Chicago with us were my children's cameras, and all the indoor pictures had to be taken without flash. Inexpensive cameras + indoor venue - flash = mediocre pictures.

However, if you'd just like to read a few details of the trip and don't mind viewing less-than-stellar pictures, well, carry on.

"A few". You know me better than that.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

We stuffed a light lunch and plenty of snacks into a backpack, loaded the GPS and the travel games box into the van, and grabbed a few CDs for the road: Adventures in Odyssey (standard car fare for all car trips), Silas Marner audiodrama, The Jesus Record. The van pulled out of the driveway at the bright and early (for us) hour of 7:20 am, only five minutes behind my targeted departure time and with plenty of cushion left. The train station in northern Indiana was an hour-forty-five away, which, thanks to the difference in time zones, meant we'd get there shortly after 8:00. Our train wasn't scheduled to leave til 8:40 but, given my tendency to run late for almost everything, I wasn't taking any chances.

We had decided, on the advice of several friends, to take the commuter train from Michigan City to Chicago rather than driving all the way there. The fare was cheaper than parking ($16 round trip for me, free for the kids) and it eliminated that whole pesky driving-in-the-big-city thing. Besides, it would be kind of a novel thing for us. Fuzz, having never ridden a real train, was ecstatic. I told her it would only be exciting for about the first 15 minutes.

The train ride was about the same length as our van ride, only I got to sit and do crosswords and kakuros instead of watching traffic and steering. That is, after I accommodated Fuzz' compulsion to engage in MadLibs every time we travel. I was able to put an end to that by finding her a wordsearch from amongst my puzzles.

 Spaz brought his own entertainment. Because he's had a tendency to get carsick, and I do mean the messy and smelly sort of carsick, I haven't let him do anything except listen to CDs & mp3s in the van for the past three years. I let him try GameBoy on the train, however, and neither he nor the train suffered any unpleasant results. Perhaps the motion is different, or perhaps he's outgrown the carsickness. I won't be putting the latter to the test any time soon.

The train was only sparsely populated when we boarded. The closer we got to Chicago, the more passengers joined us, but our car was never really crowded. We rode to the end of the line and disembarked into a huge underground terminal known as Millenium Station. With our backpack slung over one shoulder and a firm grip on Fuzz' hand, I followed the crowds confidently through the station as if I knew exactly what I was doing. Directional signs helped tremendously.

Monet: Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare-St. Lazare, 1887

(That isn't actually what our train looked like, of course. But we did see this painting a couple hours later.)

Once out of the station, we walked about 3 blocks to the Art Institute of Chicago. Along the way, we encountered several, um, colorful characters who did their noble best to cheerfully extort funds from the passers-by. "I may be an UGLY guy, but I'm a GOOD guy!" shouted one as he stood on the sidewalk holding a tin cup in his outstretched arm. Another bellowed a tune in a rich baritone while waving a magazine. "Buy this magazine for two dollars and I'll stop singing," was his pitch. I avoided eye contact and quietly instructed the kids to do the same, but I did allow a slight grin as we passed the magazine guy just steps from the art museum. "Does this mean you like my singing?" he asked.

vanGogh: The Drinkers, 1890

Once inside the museum, we all took swigs from our water bottles and stuffed them back into the backpack with our lunch and puzzle books and what-have-you before heading to the counter to check it. My friend had told me that she & her husband always stored their lunch in the lockers at the art museum, so we'd felt confident about bringing our own food. Right up until we got to the counter.

"I'm sorry, but we can't accept bags containing food or beverages," said the counter attendant. Okaaaay. This was not good. I asked him what I was supposed to do with our lunch and snacks. He suggested we either come back later after we'd eaten, consume all of it right then in the lobby, discard it all, or go back to the train station and store the bag in a locker there. Or if we desired, a certain hotel a couple blocks over would check our backpack free of charge.

I didn't like any of those options. My not liking them didn't change anything. It wasn't the attendant's problem. Apparently, I should have left the food home and brought my camera instead.

(By the way, my failure to bring my camera was was not an oversight but a deliberate decision, though in retrospect a poor one. Having assumed that no photography at all would be allowed in the art museum, I preferred not to lug my heavy-ish camera and its accessories if I couldn't use it anyway, and since it is an expensive one, I did not care for the idea of leaving it in a locker either. I decided to leave it home and borrow the kids' cameras from time to time. As it turns out, I could have used my camera inside the art museum without flash and so I greatly regretted being without it. Oh well.)

Back to the food fiasco: I was suddenly not very happy. We had barely arrived in Chicago and already were running into a major glitch. We weren't hungry and we didn't want to leave and come back later and we didn't want to throw the food away. Not that our food was so valuable -even our lunch was just snackety stuff- and not that I didn't have extra money along that we could have used to buy lunch. I just couldn't see discarding perfectly good food. I sat on a bench in lobby and contemplated just leaving it all sitting there, but my kids are too much like me and wouldn't hear of it.  Pizza goldfish and nutty bars don't come their way too often and they weren't about to let me abandon such treats. I ate some string cheese and offered them some, but neither was hungry. I was too ticked to think rationally. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't take the backpack into the museum and couldn't store it either, and I sure as heck did not want to go traipsing to some hotel with it.

vanGogh: Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples, 1887

Spaz came to the rescue. Spaz, who is even more prone than I am to let glitches ruin his mood and clog up his thought processes, stepped into my usual role. "Mom," he admonished, "we need to take care of this. Dad told me to be a man and help you. Let's just find that hotel, take the backpack there, and come back." (When I, still ticked about this incident, recounted it to some friends a few days later, one of them pointed out that I should actually recognize it as a very valuable experience, because my son had had step up to the plate and find a solution to the problem. I have to admit that she's right.) Though I still favored just abandoning the food in the lobby, I reluctantly agreed to Spaz' plan and out we went.

"Buy this magazine and I'll stop singing!" came the call from the sidewalk as we started down the steps. "I'm a may be an ugly guy, but I'm a good guy!" rang out from the other direction. In retrospect, I don't know why we didn't just stuff the granola bars into my purse and give the rest to Mr. Magazine and Mr. Ugly Good Guy. I suppose I wasn't in any mood to risk contact. At any rate, we nervously walked away from the safety and security of Michigan Avenue and headed into the dark unknown (or so it seemed to me) in search of a green awning. I didn't like this. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have, although everything turned out alright.

Munch: The Scream, 1893

Once at the green awning, we found ourselves nodding at a doorman and stepping right into swankville. I looked around at the marble floors and crystal chandeliers and felt just a tad out of place standing there with our torn little purple backpack. People looked at us and I tried to shrink down into oblivion. "We're really not supposed to do this," the porter winked as he took the backpack and gave me a claim check. We thanked him and headed back through the late morning pedestrian crowds toward the art museum. I was still annoyed, and having to hear "I'm an ugly guy but I'm a good guy!" yet again did not brighten my mood any.

But the Renoirs, they brightened my mood. And the Monets. And the Seurats. Especially THE Seurat, the one Fuzz had so looked forward to seeing.

Seurat: Sunday Afternoon at the Isle of La Grande Jatte, 1886

It's rather a large painting, wouldn't you say? (And remember, I already warned you that the pictures weren't very good.) It's one thing to look at this in a book and read that it is entirely composed of dots, and quite another to stand in front of it and see all those millions of dots up close.

"Can you imagine?" I'd said to Fuzz earlier as we stood in front of a Renoir. "We've seen this painting in books, but this is THE painting that Pierre-Auguste Renoir made. This is the canvas, this is the paint he used. These are his brushstrokes-- look at them! He painted this. He painted this. He painted this."

 
Renoir: The Laundress, 1879, and Woman at the Piano, 1876

"Mom," said Spaz from a couple frames over. "I want to just enjoy the paintings and not have to talk about them." I pointed out that I wasn't making him talk about them. "But I don't want to listen to you talk about them, either," he said. I shot him my best mom-glare, and for the rest of the morning, I was quick to turn to his attention to the school kids walking around with their clipboards or sitting on their little folding schools in front of a painting while a teacher expounded on its merits. My kids did not have to do these things. I think he got the point.

Monet: Rocks at Port Goulphar, Belle-Ile, 1886

We also had the quintessential art museum experience of being lectured by a snooty staff member. I was looking at one of the Renoirs up close (sorry; it's always the Renoirs, isn't it?), observing the brushstrokes and pointing out something or another to Fuzz when a wave of my hand toward the painting apparently came a little too close for comfort. "The paintings are best viewed from this distance," came a haughty prim voice from several yards behind me. "There is no need to be up so close unless you are examing the artist's technique." (Which, in fact, I was.) Being the highly intelligent and articulate adult that I am, I responded to her admonition by saying, "What?" (As in, "What did you say? It didn't register.") As Spaz noted later, the lady of the prim voice gave me a look. Probably similar to the one I give my kids when I explain something to them and they respond by saying, "What?"

Renoir: Two Sisters (On the Terrace), 1881

It was worth it.

I wish we had more pictures from the art museum. Spaz was being a little possessive with his camera, and I couldn't figure out how to get the flash off auto on Fuzz' camera. (It was a simple button. Duh. You'd think I'd have remembered that, considering that it had been my camera for 3 years.) Besides, we were too busy just enjoying the paintings to take many pictures.

Here are a couple that Spaz took of himself in front of some well-known paintings, doctored on the computer by me, of course, for added interest and viewability. We'll call them Self-Portrait With Vince and Spaz in Vince's Bedroom.

 
vanGogh: Self-Portrait, 1887, and Bedroom at Arles, 1889

Here I am with a Monet...

Monet: Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882

...and in this one, I suppose you could say I'm really trying to "get into" the painting.

Just so you know, I spent way too much time playing with those.

 
Degas: The Star, 1881  *  Gaugin: Woman In Front of a Still-Life by Cezanne, 1890

Once we'd finished looking at the Impressionist paintings, we set off to find the Post-Impressionist and Modern artists we'd read about- Matisse, Chagall, Picasso... But alas, it was not to be. That part of the museum was closed for renovations. Okay, well, we'd already gotten what we'd paid for and then some. Especially since we hadn't paid anything.

Our next step was deciding whether we did, indeed, want to pay something. The Museum's current $pecial exhibit featured the works of Edvard Munch, many of which had been imported from Norway just for this $how. It wasn't something we'd be likely to ever see anywhere else. But the cost was more than I had anticipated, since I had misread the information on the website. I was trying to keep this trip very low-budget, but on the other hand, it would probably be well worth seeing the exhibit, and Spaz really wanted to. On the other other hand (because I have three hands, apparently), the hour we'd spend in the Munch exhibit would be an hour not spent enjoying the free exhibits at Shedd Aquarium, and we only had so much time left. So I reluctantly decided to pass up Munch. Which, by the way, is properly pronounced "Moonk".

Munch, Anxiety, 1896

If Munch had done my kids, do you think it might have looked like this?

Okay, probably not, but it was worth a try.

Even without Munch, we could have spent all day at the Art Institute and not seen everything. It was never our plan to see everything; the beauty of "free admission" is that we didn't feel as though we had to. We picked a couple more exhibits to walk through and then called it good.

As should I now. That's quite enough for one post, don't you think? Part Two, assuming I get to it (which is a rather bold assumption indeed, considering the source), will feature delightfully sub-par pics from Shedd Aquarium, along with perhaps just a teensy little bit of commentary. (Ya think?)