Is the Grass Really Greener on the Other Side of...Chicago?

When Will and I were last in Italy, in 2009, we had a simple and spectacular lunch near Positano, complete with breathtaking scenery spread out below us.  Anticipating the famous hike along the Via degli dei which we planned on taking for our after-lunch stroll, we were just loving everything.  The fresh ingredients in our food, the enviable cliff-side view, the heroic bus driver who somehow made it up the steep and winding road to this amazing destination perched on--what seemed--the top of the world.

In our jubilant mood, we fell into conversation with our friendly server, a young man with much better English than our guidebook Italian.  He asked us where we came from, and we said Chicago.  He seemed to find it miraculous that someone from Chicago could find mere Amalfi coastline of Italy so charming.  In surprise, we inquired if he didn't just absolutely LOVE living in his town!  He said that it's "ok," but he'd prefer to visit Chicago.  Gazing around at all the loveliness, we were stupefied by his response.

I was reminded of this conversation a couple of years ago when two recently retired friends (and former colleagues) of mine were about to depart for a two-week trip to Belgium.  Will and I very much enjoyed off-season European travel when we were living in England, and I was supremely jealous of their (retired) ability to enjoy Belgium in October.  Imagine my astonishment when one of my friends replied that she was excited about the trip but was disappointed that she would miss seeing leaves change colors here.  Seriously?  Leaves changing colors in Chicago?  Who cares about that compared to Brussels and Bruges?!

But after that conversation, and especially during our sabbatical time off together, we have been trying to look at Chicago with a fresh perspective.  I've lived in or near the city for over twenty years and Will has lived here only a slightly shorter period, so it's possible that we got a little blasé about America's "Second City."  In our quest for foreign adventures, perhaps we underrate the beauty and cultural significance of our "home" town?

If we end up retiring to France or Italy thousands of miles away, we will most likely miss many aspects of home, so we decided that we wanted to be more deliberate in our appreciation of Chicago.

Last summer, during a brief Chicago lull between the first of our two trips to Montreal and to Los Angeles, we finally ate at Girl and the Goat (pictured above).  While we routinely research top dining spots when we are traveling, we have been much slower to try the most popular and esteemed Chicago restaurants.  Once we had first bites of our first dishes at Girl and the Goat, we wondered why it took us so long to get to a place within a 15-minute drive from our home!

Luckily, we have friends who love jazz, so they get us out to the Chicago Jazz Festival every Labor Day weekend.  During our last visit to the fest (above), as we sat under cloudless skies and took in the lively scene before us, it was difficult to understand why we don't make it to downtown more often.  Our friends, on the other hand, live more than an hour's drive away from Chicago, yet they manage to get over to Chicago regularly!  Has our familiarity--well, perhaps our proximity--with our city bred contempt?

Sadly the same goes for other cultural attractions...  Every year we renew memberships at NPR/WBEZ, Chicago Botanic Garden, and Art Institute of Chicago, etc.  But while we listen fairly regularly to WBEZ, we sometimes go an entire year without visiting the garden or the museum.

In August--after enjoying Girl and the Goat so much--we made a point of walking around the Chicago Botanic Garden, one of the best-kept and impressive gardens we've visited, with water lilies that remind you of Monet paintings.

Then, just this past weekend, we finally went back to a world-class art museum housing many of those Monet water lilies, our very own Art Institute of Chicago (12 miles from home!).  One of the discoveries of our ex-pat year in England--hopping across many capitals of Europe--was that the AIC more than held its own against most museums in Paris, London, Brussels, Vienna, and Madrid.  Especially if you're a fan of French Impressionists, Chicago's Art Institute is a treasure.

It's simply jaw-dropping to enter a gallery to be faced straightaway with not only Georges Seurat's famous Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte but also--mere feet away from that massive painting--so many other recognizable pieces.  A Renoir here, a Degas there, more Monet water lilies and haystacks than you ever thought you'd see outside of France.  Bedroom at Arles by Van Gogh, a striking Gauguin, an activity-laden Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet portraits, a rainy Pissarro streetscape... And we're still in the impressionists section.  We haven't gotten near Chagall windows or Picasso's blue period!

This season's Rodin exhibit ended up being more educational and meaningful for me than I expected.  A part of me thought that having toured the delightful Rodin museum in Paris meant that (ho-hum) Chicago couldn't offer us anything more.  I was wrong.  Their exhibit does a wonderful job of crystallizing some important stylistic elements of Rodin's work.  And the pictures I took of the trio of Adam (pictured above), Eve, and the Creation (of Adam and Eve) might give me yet another entry point into discussing Paradise Lost the next time I teach my course on Milton.

By the time we came out of the museum, it had started snowing.  The grounds near Lake Shore Drive looked so beautiful in the snow that I took a snapshot of it through the car window--and resolved to continue our rediscovery of Chicago...