Of duck tongues and corn fungus

June 11, 2014 / Greg / 2 Comments

On this recent trip to Chicago, my eating out was pretty even split between some delicious downmarket staples and a couple of higher end meals. Chicago is a truly great eating and drinking town, and on this visit I booked restaurant reservations at a couple of places where the menus and reputations for inventive food excited me. So excited in fact, that for my first night in the city I opted for the allure of a delicious meal over a Blackhawks – Canadiens hockey game. That’s right – I chose eating over sports. Maybe I’m becoming more refined as I age…

Night one: The moment the reservation window opened for the Girl & the Goat (I think it was three months before my planned visit), I grabbed one and started scouting the menu. The idea of sampling a number of small plates was high on my list, and the restaurant’s ability to scale down dishes to suit a solo diner looking to try multiple things made me very excited. One item that was personally recommended to me by Chef Stephanie Izard on Twitter was the duck tongues. I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t even know ducks had tongues. What a delicious discovery! Here’s what will probably be the best thing I eat all year – duck tongues with crispy wontons, black beans and piri piri:

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It can’t be Nashville every night

June 5, 2014June 5, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

When the city for a conference I try to attend each year was announced as Nashville, I got a wee bit excited. I’ve been reading a lot of travel buzz about Music City USA, and as I’ve come to learn more about Nashville, I’m a bit sad to not have some extra time there. This is one of the rare trips where I’m not able to tack on a few extra days, so I’ll be squeezing my tourist adventures into the margins on this one.

With limited time in Nashville next week, I’ve got an almost impossible to achieve itinerary of things to see and do, but I’m going to try my best. There are a few barbeque joints to try and I will find a way to sample the local specialty “hot chicken” at least once (probably twice). Luckily, one of Nashville’s best hot chicken joints is close to the conference hotel. I hope to set aside one evening to take in some bluegrass and alt-country/Americana music at the wide selection of live music joints. I think I can fit in a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and perhaps a quick walking tour of downtown Nashville and some of its relatively new public art installations. There’s also the allure of venturing out one night to take in Nashville’s triple A baseball team, the Sounds, and their cool retro guitar shaped scoreboard in left field.

Ambitious plans for a short trip, but looking forward to whatever I can squeeze in. I can always catch up on my sleep on the plane on the way home!

Public art in the Loop

May 31, 2014 / Greg / 2 Comments

On an almost unbelievably perfect early April day in Chicago (clear skies, temperature over 20C), I strapped on my super comfy walking shoes for an urban hike to explore public art near and inside “the Loop”. That’s an area in downtown that’s contained within the elevated train that runs through the heart of Chicago. In the city’s wisdom, there’s an abundance of public art to give life to an area rife with office buildings and miles upon miles of concrete.

Just east of the loop is Millennium Park, home to some of the most iconic of Chicago’s public art, and the first stop on my self-guided tour. The first piece I took in was “Crown Fountain”. It consists of two large skyscraper shaped structures with images of Chicago natives projected on them. Sadly, the fountains spewing from the mouths of the projected images weren’t operational on my visit, but the art is striking nonetheless:

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30 travel memories from my 30s

May 24, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

As the calendar counts down to the final days where I am able to call myself a thirty-something year old, I’ve been thinking back on the last decade of my life. All in all, my thirties have felt like they provided a lifetime worth of experiences in a short ten year period. Many of my favourite experiences have come from embracing travel as part of my lifestyle. These are thirty of my favourite travel memories from a great decade. I can only hope the next ten years are as much fun.

1. An evening spent sitting with my then girlfriend, now wife, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower while enjoying a nice bottle of Burgundy

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A night on the south side

May 22, 2014 / Greg / 4 Comments

I’ll admit something that may not be kosher with traditional baseball fans. I greatly preferred the experience of watching baseball on the south side of Chicago in the home of the White Sox compared to taking in a game at Wrigley. Not that Wrigley is without its charms – far from it. But a game at Wrigley is a bit like watching baseball in a theme park dedicated to what it was like to watch baseball fifty years ago.

The White Sox play at the much more modern and comfortable US Cellular Field about a fifteen minute train ride south of downtown Chicago. Given the relative lack of popularity of the White Sox, I was able to snag a prime seat right behind home for the game. I made a beeline to my seat to get a sense of how good I’d have it for the night. I was pretty happy with my selection:

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Chicago’s delicious iconic foods

May 17, 2014 / Greg / 3 Comments

By any measure, Chicago is a great food city. I’ve been there two times now, and have barely scratched the surface of what’s available. On this last trip, I made a point of rounding out my dance card of Chicago favourites. First stop shortly after touching down: the Billy Goat Tavern for a “cheezborger”

Drawing its fame jointly as the backdrop to a famous SNL skit as well as the source of the curse that has kept the Cubs out of the World Series, it’s a great humble bar tucked on the lower level of Michigan Avenue. The cheeseburger (I ordered a triple) was a perfect old fashioned delight and I enjoyed sitting at the bar and talking baseball with the bartender.

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Another return from Toronto

May 11, 2014May 3, 2015 / Greg / Leave a comment

It’s not quite an annual tradition, but my Dad and I try to make it up to Toronto as often as we can to take in some Blue Jays games and check out a few sights from around the city. Lately, we’ve been pretty solid good luck charms for the Jays, and it was no different on this trip with the home team winning two of the three games we saw. We also seem to inspire the best in Edwin Encarnacion on our visits. He might want to include some free tickets and a plush downtown condo for us in his next contract negotiations. Here he is circling the bases after one of three monster home runs he hit while we looked on:

A second trip to Toronto in 2014 for me, this was a really nice three days with my Dad. There was a lot of time at Rogers Centre for the games, a trip to the new aquarium at the base of the CN Tower, some time over on the Toronto Islands on a pleasant spring day, a visit to the St. Lawrence Market and more than a couple of ice cold Steam Whistle beers enjoyed while just generally hanging out. I’ll write more in the coming weeks on a few new to me experiences in Toronto.

Cloud Gate

May 6, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

Favourite 2014 travel photos. Chicago, IL. April 2014

Feeling like Ferris Bueller

April 30, 2014 / Greg / 6 Comments

I didn’t have a Ferrari at my disposal, and wouldn’t make it to the Art Institute until later in the trip, but spending a midweek afternoon at Wrigley Field had me feeling at least a little bit like Ferris on his famous day off. Ferris certainly had a much nicer day to take in a ballgame than I ended up with. But I was on vacation, the rain mostly held off, and in all honesty, it’s pretty hard to have a bad time taking in a game at the virtually 100 year old Wrigley Field.

Shortly after the gates opened on a very blustery and damp early April day, I took a seat to catch a bit of Pittsburgh’s batting practice:

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Early bird gets the craft beer

April 22, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

I’m blessed with a very robust body clock. When I travel, it can take me days to shake off even a small timezone adjustment. On this recent trip to Chicago, I found myself waking around 4:30am each day and patiently awaiting the time when I could venture out of the hotel to find breakfast. Even on my third morning, I was still operating on Atlantic Time. Why am I telling you this?… To justify a story of me wandering up to the Bucktown neighbourhood northwest of downtown Chicago on a Saturday morning in search of a craft beer bar called the Map Room.

There’s something about being on vacation that makes it relatively acceptable to partake in a drink before the crisp hour of noon. It’s even more justifiable if that drink at 11:30am “feels” like it’s been had at 1:30pm. By the third day of this solo trip, I was in an indulgent mood. The idea of a great beer (or two) in an outstanding neighbourhood bar while reading a book was what I wanted. After pouring over an outstanding draught list, I choose the most local beer available, a 3 Floyds Brewing “Live a Rich Life” double IPA (from Munster, Indiana). It was a hoppy, Belgian style double. At 9.5% ABV, I was glad to have a few of these delicious bread sticks to help mop up the alcohol: