In the City

It would not be fair for us to share all of our country experiences while giving no time to describing our visits back to the city (and suburbs) during our vacation in the states. When we weren't being glamorous in Hollywood or relaxing on the farm we were spending time with Dave's family in the Chicago area. For a couple of days we got to visit with our friends, Jared and Emily. They just finished their two years at Woodstock School and were taking a cross country road trip before starting graduate school. When they made their way to Chicago, we decided to show them around the "Little India" area of Chicago's north side. This stretch of Devon Avenue is home to much of Chicago's South Asian immigrant community. Naturally, part of the street has been renamed after Mohandas Gandhi. To make sure that there is peace on the street though, the section a little further east was renamed, too.

After giving Jared and Emily a taste of India in Chicago, we thought we'd share some of the city's gastronomic delights with them, as well. These included Italian beef, Chicago hot dogs, and deep dish pizza. Having visited the Taj Mahal with Jared and Emily, it seemed that the only appropriate place for a hot dog was the famous Superdawg (it inexplicably shares a spot with the Taj Mahal in the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die).

We also had a chance to see some of Chicago's tourists sites. We walked the Magnificent Mile and got pictures taken in front of Picasso's scultpure in Daley Plaza and the more recent "Cloud Gate" sculpture (known more colloquially simply as "the bean").

As cultured world travellers, though, these large public sculptures were simply not enough art. We took a quick tour of the Art Institute of Chicago to sample the finer examples. You can see that we are very critical in our appreciation of Monet and Seurat.

One final interesting thing that we noticed in our visit to the city was an actual chunk of India preserved in the Chicago Tribune building. If you cannot make it out in the picture below, the white block above the window is an alleged piece of the Taj Mahal.

Emily looks incredulous because she did not think that the government of India would allow some newspaper publisher to simply come to Agra and hack off a small portion of the most famous building in the world. With or without an actual piece of the Taj Mahal, Chicago is a really great place to visit.

Dave and Beth