I spent the first 25 years of my life in Chicago and still get back to visit the city I love fairly often because we still have family there. While I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago one of the few things we would splurge some of our limited student finances on were some of the wonderful professional dance performances the city offered. One of our favorite troupes back then was the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. So last fall when I saw they would be performing in Chicago in May after the school year was over I excitedly recruited my Chicago-based daughter and fellow dance fan Sara to accompany me to one of their shows. They were scheduled to perform several nights but I chose a Thursday night figuring that there might be less competition for tickets and also because it wouldn't conflict with any of Sara's weekend plans. I bought a pair of tickets when they went on sale and was happy to get floor seats in the historic Auditorium Theatre.
I arrived in town on Thursday afternoon and checked into the free hotel room hubby was able to get with some of the "Hilton points" he accumulates with his business travel. Sara, who is an engineer for a firm right at Wabash and Adams, stopped by the hotel to pick me up on her walk home from work. Before we left we stopped briefly in a 24th floor lounge in the hotel to check out their happy hour appetizers. The appetizers were nothing to write home about but the view from the 24th floor, looking out across Grant Park to Lake Michigan and the small boat harbor was fascinating. Usually looking out at Lake Michigan is almost like an ocean view since it appears to go on forever. But on this day a low hanging fog front was visibly moving in from the water. When we first arrived we could see all the sailboats moored in the harbor, but in a matter of moments they and the lake were completely gone!! And gradually the ground-level fog began to eat up Lake Shore Drive and Grant Park as it moved westward. It was a really spooky sight that I had never seen before - an almost sinister sight akin to a Steven King movie since it was happening so quickly and so completely.
We then walked the couple blocks to Sara's apartment (which I had only seen photos of up to that point) and had more amazing views of the fog rolling into town. Then she and her beau Sam took me for a wonderful dinner at The Curry House. I became an immediate fan of the Chicken Momo that Sam recommended. Momos are the Indian/Pakistani/Tibetan equivalent of Chinese dumplings. These had the shape of the more familiar potstickers but were filled with a wonderful chicken curry mixture. Yum!
The Auditorium Theatre was just a few blocks away and I needed that little walk after stuffing myself with curry and naan. Approaching the theatre, which is housed in one of the famous Chicago buildings designed by Adler and Sullivan, brought back a flood of memories - not just because of the dance performances attended there back in the day, but also because my very first teaching position had been at Roosevelt University while I was writing my dissertation.
Roosevelt University is housed in the same building as the Auditorium although it has grown quite a bit since then.
When Sara and I were led to our seats in the beautiful theatre I was totally shocked to find that we were front row center for this evening. That was not what I had expected from the seating chart! All the rows of 'pit' seats indicated in the charts had been removed for the dance performances! So we literally had the best seats in the house without even realizing it. I sat back to thoroughly enjoy the experience since it certainly would probably never happen again.
The Alvin Ailey dancers were as wondrous I had remembered. Sometimes I could not help but gasp at their amazing movements and the beautiful effects the troupe created. I enjoyed each and every dance, but particularly enjoyed the 50th year anniversary performance of their famed multi-part dance Revelations (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Fix Me Jesus)
I was so happy when my sister had offered to take Friday off of work to take advantage of my visit to Chicago. She took the Metro train into town to meet me and got us tickets for an architectural boat tour. I was a bit worried that the tour might not happen, remembering the fog of the previous afternoon. But the day dawned sunny and mild and the fog had mostly retreated in he morning. The boat tour, which went both north and south down the Chicago River, was just great. A talented architecture student provide rich narration, fully educating us about the history of buildings, the styles of architecture and some of the city's interesting architectural 'dirt'. It was so much more informative than your typical boat tour and the weather was perfect for our top-deck open-air viewing. As the boat returned to its dock, however, that spooky fog was again moving into the city, hiding successively more and more of the shoreline with each hour of the afternoon. Good thing we had planned an early boat ride!
Then a quick cab to the restaurant Judi had picked for lunch. She knows my food enthusiast, gourmet cooking, Top Chef addict ways and had selected the Frontera Grill, one of the restaurants of famous chef and cookbook author Rick Bayless. We had so much fun sampling from his upscale Mexican menu and tropical drinks. I loved my ceviche trio and chicken mole enchiladas and a wonderful mixed drink made with Mexican beer rather than hard liquor.
We both left fully sated and knew that dinner better be late tonight! We left Chicago early enough to beat most of the the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic towards her home outside the city in Cary, IL.
Saturday morning Judi and I had fun shopping before I had to head back to Iowa. No, we're not clothes shoppers like some. For us a great morning shopping involves plant nurseries and gourmet grocery stores! : ) I ended up with 2 flats full of a mix of perennials and exotic annuals, then had fun exploring and making judicious travel-able purchases at Trader Joe's and a great Italian grocery store. So my visit to old Chicago could not have been better: Precious time with amily, culture, yummy food, fun shopping and good audiobooks for the hours in the car.
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