Favourite 2014 travel photos. Chicago, IL. April 2014.
Under the Bean
Author: Greg
A morning of sharks, eels and blue lobsters
My Dad was pretty stoked to visit the new aquarium on our visit to Toronto. I’ve never been much of an aquarium guy. Honestly, when I walk around one, I’m pretty much thinking, “I wonder how that fish would taste?” Maybe I shouldn’t visit these places around lunch. But I digress… The Toronto Aquarium was a pretty cool attraction and captured my interest enough that it made me pretty excited to visit the New England Aquarium on my recent visit to Boston.
The main feature at the Toronto Aquarium is their shark tank. But they first tease you with a whole host of interesting sea life. One of my favourites was the steely eyed wolf eel:
Jays games with Dad
I’m having a pretty good year of seeing baseball so far – a couple of early season games in Chicago, a recent game in Boston, and back in May, my Dad and I took in three Blue Jays games in Toronto. This is the second time over the past few years that we’ve moved into my sister’s downtown apartment while she was away, stocked up the fridge with a few days supply of Steam Whistle, and then spent most of our time down at the place formerly known as SkyDome.
For the first of the three games, the Phillies were in town to start a short two game series. Dad and I were camped out way up in the 500 level with vertigo-inducing seats:
Arthur, Ottawa and (finally) Boston
Our recent trip to Boston, planned as a second honeymoon, almost didn’t happen. The days leading up to our departure had both of us watching the track of Hurricane Arthur. Our timing was impeccable – a hurricane headed for Halifax…. in July. I wrote about rolling with the inevitable punches traveling will throw at you from my recent experiences in Nashville. This trip to Boston was about to throw a haymaker.
It became pretty obvious that Arthur was setting its sights on a direct hit to Nova Scotia the Saturday morning we were scheduled to fly to Boston. Hope was gone for it tracking out to sea and once Air Canada granted fee-free changes, we took a calculated risk to move up our flight to the Friday afternoon before. The trouble with a hurricane hitting Halifax is that it will tend to hit Boston the day before it reaches us. I wasn’t convinced that we’d get out to Boston, but was hopeful if we started our journey early, we’d have more options out and around the storm. Sitting at the gate awaiting the flight to Boston, the sound of the passenger manifest being printed off about 40 minutes before the flight raised my spirits.
Then it happened. I glanced up to catch the dreaded word on the screen. CANCELED.
The Amazing Race challenge was on. We hurried into line at the gate, got on our cells and managed to get re-booked out to Ottawa around the storm with a flight on to Boston the next morning. We were very lucky. People just behind us in the line and a bit later on their phones weren’t able to get re-booked until two days later. When we got to the front of the line to get our new boarding passes we got our first pleasant surprise: Air Canada would be putting us up in Ottawa on their dime. Sweet! We made our way over to the domestic terminal gates and realized our seats weren’t together to Ottawa. I inquired if there was a way we could be seated together. Pleasant surprise number two: exit row seats to Ottawa and Boston! With a couple of hours until our flight, I was ready for the time-honoured tradition of killing time with an airport bar beer:
Clearing my head beside Lake Michigan
The last word on my recent trip to Chicago goes to a quiet Saturday morning I spent walking along Lake Michigan. Sometimes on solo trips, I find a need to just stop running from place to place or event to event and “just be” for a bit. In a big city like Chicago, this can be a bit of a challenge with all of its sights. On my last full day there, I took the subway a couple of stops north of my hotel and then walked east toward Lake Michigan. It had been a long day previous – a lot of exploring public art, an afternoon at the Art Institute, a White Sox game, then some time in a blues club. Early morning coffee in hand, I was in need of some quiet time to clear my head, much like the early morning clouds clearing off over the water:
Escape to the islands
When my Dad and I were in Toronto back in early May, we weren’t treated to great weather for the few days there. It was unseasonably cold and windy, so we were lucky the Jays games we went to were played under the dome. We did get one relatively nice afternoon to make a trip neither of us had before. A quick walk from my sister’s condo (our home away from home for this trip) is the ferry over to the Toronto Islands. Shortly after departing downtown, this is the view back toward the city… pretty nice!
Looking up (way up) in Chicago
I have yet to set foot in a more beautiful big city downtown than Chicago’s. It’s fairly compact and walkable, has a river running through it (always a plus for someone born near the water), and is unafraid and unashamed of the interplay of modern and older architectural styles present in its skyscrapers. On a sunny day, it really is something special. And luckily for me, on my recent trip there, the sun was out in full force. Perhaps no other single view point provides a better snapshot of the beauty of the downtown area than at the point the Chicago River passes underneath Michigan Avenue:
Chicago River
Favourite 2014 travel photos. Chicago, IL. April 2014.
Rolling with the punches
I recently wrote about how friendly I found Nashville to be. But the metaphysical Nashville threw some things at me to test my adoration – I had my pinky finger slammed in a cab door when a bellboy closed it in haste, was stuck for the better part of a half hour in a crowded malfunctioning hotel elevator and got trapped in a cab with a cabbie suffering some sort of emotional distress who wanted to take me somewhere other than back to my hotel (the first time in my life I seriously considered jumping out of a moving vehicle). That would normally sour me on a place, but not with Nashville.
Rolling with the punches is a life lesson travel will attempt to teach you pretty often. If you can take the inevitable challenges travel throws at you with a dose of good humour, you’ll at least end up with a good story in the end. After my finger was slammed and stuck in the cab door and the requisite screaming was done, I asked the bellboy for some ice, a towel and two Tylenol, then got the cabbie to take me where I was planning to go. My finger was all kinds of swollen and sore, but this was my one chance to see the Country Music Hall of Fame. I was even the recipient of a sympathetic free shot of bourbon at a downtown bar later that day when the bartender caught a glimpse of my finger.
Traveling home from Nashville, I had another opportunity to roll with the punches. My flight from Philly was cancelled leaving me with ten hours to kill and a strong likelihood my new flight would never take off. What did I do? I ticked two things off my “not yet in Philly” list. First, a cheese steak from Tony Luke’s, and the best one I’ve ever had in the city in my well researched opinion:
A warm welcome from Nashville
Solo travel gives one an interesting perspective on the hospitality of a place. When you’re by yourself, you become more in tune with those around you. Cabbies, bartenders, waiters, hotel staff and a cadre of locals (in my case, usually found in a craft beer bar, restaurant, art gallery or at a concert) can make you feel welcomed and part of a place, or just another anonymous visitor. Over my short four days in Nashville, I gave this question a lot of thought:
Had I ever been anywhere friendlier?
With the notable exception of St. John’s, NL, I’m having great difficulty in thinking of any city I’ve been that’s been more welcoming. The people of Nashville were unfailingly warm and open. Those I met on this trip quickly felt like long lost friends, eager to share a story and a laugh. What initially was a place that in my mind I might never get back to, now has become a place to which to return.
Sadly, this was only a short visit, but I think I got a great taste of southern culture. I wandered around the last afternoon of the CMA Music Fest hopping from stage to stage to listen in on some country music. I ate almost exclusively from regional specialties – barbeque, hot chicken, catfish, greens, grits, fried green tomatoes… every meal was an experience. I tried a number of great Tennessee craft beers. I did a little evening bar hopping along Broadway to take in some blue grass and old country standards.
I’m pretty happy with what I squeezed around the edges of this work-related trip. It gave me a nice taste of Nashville and was a wonderful warm up for what now will be a “sometime in the future” visit back to Tennessee. I’ll write more on Nashville in the coming weeks…
Bluenose Traveler 