Thursday September 28th
Melissa had taken the day off, and we had decided that the Chicago Botanic Gardens would be good to see together. It was cool and a little drizzly, but there wasn’t really any rain. We set off after breakfast, and she set the GPS to navigate to the gardens. It took her on a route she wasn’t expecting, starting off from their place. We found out later there was an accident nearby somewhere, and it was probably routing us around it.
It took around 45 minutes to get there. We parked at the gardens and paid the entry fees. I think she got a discount because she was a resident of the Chicago area, and some of her taxes were paying for it. The gardens were quite extensive, with a lot of water, lakes and islands, a waterfall, and some quite structured areas. It was lovely to see how many flowers were still going.
There was what they called a tram, doing tours around the garden. It was a little vehicle pulling carriages, but seemed to drive on the road rather than tracks. We were debating whether to take one, but we decided in the end that we could just walk around the garden. At one point we walked by some kind of instrument, a tower with bells in it, and what looked like a keyboard inside a little cubicle. It would have been interesting to hear what it sounded like.
Someone had created what was called a living sculpture, what looked like a little castle, made out of flexible shoots of wood. They all looked dead, so we wondered what was living about it, but it seemed that they had planted some creepers here and there, and I guess the idea was that they would eventually grow and cover it. It got progressively clearer for a while, and we got some sunshine, which was nice.
We spent about two hours there, and by then it was getting to be about 12.30, so we were thinking about lunch. Melissa suggested a Chicago speciality, deep dish pizza, and knew of a good place to get some, not far away. She recommended a pizza with tomato and three different types of cheese. She had me at “cheese”, and it was delicious!
The gardens weren’t far from Lake Michigan (which seemed more like a sea, you couldn’t see the other side), and she drove home via a highway which went along the coast for a while, and next to the CBD, so I saw the lake, and also the city, though we didn’t stop anywhere. It wasn’t easy to get off the highway to the beach I think – it was four lanes each way, with no traffic lights for quite a while, and parking was probably tricky along there too. Melissa explained the rules of American Football to me while we drove, which was quite interesting.
Once home, we chatted and had dinner, and then watched a match in the evening, where Gurp explained a few points about the game as well. There were college matches on TV. The game is so big that even matches between different colleges are televised. Tango had got more comfortable with me being around, and had decided it was safe to sit around in the living room. We talked about when it would be good for me to leave the next day, to avoid the traffic. The general consensus was that it would be better to leave after the peak-hour traffic, than to try and get in before it.
Comments