Saturday, August 6, 2011

Summer travel: Chicago

 We just returned from a short visit to Chicago.  I had a conference for work and Jeremy was able to travel along.  We made schedules work and stayed on an extra day to see the city.

We really love Chicago.  And, we always try to stay just long enough to get our fill of city life before retreating back to the country.

For the past couple of visits, my assignment has been to find agriculture in the city.  It's been a fun challenge to think about how city dwellers connect with nature and source their food.  We often talk about how we imagine the lives of people who live in the city - not mowing a yard seems really unusual to us.

We enjoy the gardens and sculpture areas near Millennium and Grant Parks.  We took a break in the natural area near the Cloud Gate (or The Bean).  The paving along the path looked to be natural stone and about the thickness of a counter top.  These pieces of stone were set together on edge to form this beautiful walkway between beds of plans.  We really liked this idea.

 This Kansas girl always seems to find sunflowers.  We found a farmers market the first afternoon near the Museum of Contemporary Art.  It happened to be the free day for that museum and we enjoyed walking around the farmers market and taking in the art exhibits.  Later that night, they had free jazz on the terrace.

It was a great trip!  The food we enjoyed is worth a whole post of its own.

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