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A Museum Visit 25 Years in the Making

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  The first time Will and I traveled to Montréal was in the summer of 1999.  We had just gotten engaged, and we were taking a side trip into Canada on our way to Vermont.   The trip was planned as very much a union of two vastly different interests: the outdoorsy and the cultural.  As you might imagine, the Vermont part was 100% Will's trip.  I had not been on a bike since I was 12 years old, and I had no idea just how difficult biking 25 miles per day in Vermont would be.  (Now I know.) And the idea was that Montréal would be  my  part of the trip: French food, French language, Old Montréal architecture, and the art museum.  Will was happy to eat croissants and crepes and fondu (poor Will, right?) and then try to feign interest as I enjoyed a day of art at the museum.  But as luck would have it--or was it planned all along...?--Montréal Museum of Fine Arts was not open on Mondays, the only full day we would be in the city.  So, we never made it to the museum in 1999.  Nor ever sin
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Back on Sabbatical, and Back in Montréal!

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Remember the amazing and whimsical graffiti art in Montréal (like the one below)?  Well, here they are--and here WE are--again!   Yep, seven years after we were last in Montréal, we are back for another love affair with this French-speaking city with a hip and edgy vibe.    We realize it's been several years since we last posted, so a quick recap is in order. We were living in Portland, Oregon, when the coronavirus struck, and we quickly packed up and drove back to Chicago area in March 2020.  Then found ourselves working very intensely, very long hours.  That meant we had less time to travel or bike or hike to fun places.  And also that we had no time to write about any of little things we did have time to do.  Then Will took the opportunity from his company to take another package to leave earlier this year.   So, perhaps we will be able to revive this blog to document our (once again) sabbatical life?  For the first jaunt of our summer 2024 trips, we are in Montréal for a week,
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Day Trip to Astoria: Too Hot to Stay in Town...

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Will and I are researchers at heart--and by training too--so when we were planning to move to the Pacific northwest, we read about the notoriously gloomy and wet weather.  People called it "English climate," and we thought we were mostly prepared for that.  After all, we spent over a year (Will spent two) living in England.  For our initial round of packing, we included several waterproof jackets, scarves, and umbrellas.  We were ready! Then we arrived in Portland in the first part of July.  And it was been a loooong series of 90+ days of full sun--except the occasional 101- or 104-degree days.  Yes, it is true that the string is sometimes snapped with an outlier 72-degree day.  (Thank goodness for small miracles!)  But otherwise, it's been SUNNY and HOT! Of course, it turns out--when you probe a bit deeper--that Pacific northwest summers have ALWAYS been dry and sunny, if not quite this hot.  Unfortunately, it sounds like all the sunlight hours Portland gets are c
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Enjoying Our New Home Away from Home

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As I mentioned in the last post , we are in transition this summer.  We're not leaving the Chicago area entirely (after all, we still have a condo to sell !), but we are adding a new Portland-area zip code to our lives.  So for the rest of the summer at least, it's goodbye mid-west and hello pacific northwest! Because we have been busy making yet another drive across the country and then setting up a new menage (lots more on that in another post probably), we haven't had a chance to sight-see as much as we'd like.  Once things settle down and we establish a rhythm of working in this new area (Will) and traveling back and forth (me), hopefully we will get to familiarize ourselves more fully with the charms of the pacific northwest.  In the meantime, let me enumerate a few aspects we already enjoy about our new home-away-from home: NATURAL BEAUTY We love Chicago (well, maybe I love it a bit more than Will does...), but it certainly cannot compete with the paci
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What We Can Pack into (and Eat in) A Summer Week in Our Town

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There is a strong possibility that we might be moving sometime this summer.  We might not be going away permanently, and we would most likely operate out of two households for the foreseeable future, but we might no longer be living full time in our little suburb bordering Chicago.  That's both very exciting and a little sad. Will and I have lived over twenty years in the Chicago area, so a change of scenery is long overdue.  After all, there is a LOT more world out there to be lived in!  We are curious to see if we would like living in a place like New York City, or San Francisco, or Paris, etc.  Or a smaller town or a more rural setting with a mountain or beach-y feel--like Park City, Utah; Algarve, Portugal; Dordogne, France; or Abruzzo, Italy.  Now we are in the process of documenting some of the aspects of Chicago we have taken for granted but which we'll miss.  (In fact, I've already mentioned how odd it might be that we would probably miss French Toast if we
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Walking Lake Geneva, WI

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In less than a month, Will and I have logged a LOT of miles in driving and flying.  Between professional travel, family visits, and social engagements, we've had--sometimes together, and sometimes separately--three driving trips to central and southern Illinois, and two round-trip flights out west.  Yes, all within the last 4 weeks! Needless to say, by the time this week came along, we sort of needed to veg out and relax.  But we also wanted to get outside and enjoy some fresh air after being inside cars and airplanes for so long.  (On our way back from LA, our flight was grounded, after boarding, for over 3 hours while we waited out O'Hare's embargo on all flights in the aftereffects of Tropical Storm Alberto!) So, in the middle of the week, we took off for a day trip to one of our favorite nearby destinations: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the main road heading into Lake Geneva is impossible to endure on weekends, so we like visiting
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Winery, Casino, Ramen, Oh My!: One Week in Southern California

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We recently returned from a whirlwind week in Southern California, and I'm here to report again on this part of the country that we've become much more familiar with since we began our "gap year." After we flew into LA last week, we picked up our rental car and then my parents, and immediately whisked them off south of the city, to Temecula, near San Diego.  What's in Temecula that there was this rush to head straight there before all else? One-cent video slot machines!  What else??? For the life of me, I fail to understand the allure of these video slot machines, but my parents absolutely adore these brightly-colored and obnoxiously-voiced machines that spit out incomprehensible instructions. In the few times I attempted to spend some minutes keeping my parents company by "playing" next to them, I've been befuddled by exhortations to "Stack the monkeys!" or been greeted with I-Dream-of-Jeannie figures calling me "Master.
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Preparing to Live Abroad by Going with the Flow

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When I grow up, I want to become the Postmistress of Castrojeriz, Spain. Imagine a job where you come in Monday-Friday from 9:30-10am.  You get to enjoy a bit of "office" camaraderie, interact with a few local residents, help out struggling tourists who want to send a postcard from their Camino route , and then go home in time to have a proper breakfast and really start the day. Of course, if you are a tourist--or, for that matter, a resident--who needs the post office to be open beyond 30 minutes in the morning, these hours could be a bit frustrating.  And--gasp!--what if I needed something on the weekend?  Then, I might be missing the Chicago-area suburbs with their 24-hour grocery stores, Saturday hours for the post office, etc. We have had enough adventures with European ideas of public services to know that all will not be smooth sailing if and when we finally do move there.  In fact, in just about every country we are contemplating living in, we've had some
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