Chicago

On Monday, I went into Chicago to meet up with the elusive Gloria Mui who I haven’t seen since Medfest 2005. She was in Chicago for some pharmaceutical conference. So yesterday I took the train into the city, and actually missed the train I wanted because I couldn’t find a parking space in the first lot. Well, I got into the city and met up with her and we took the L out to the Garfield Park Conservatory. The greenhouse and gardens are a bit larger than those of Lincoln Park, and much nicer too. I really liked their fern room set-up. There’s also a special sculpture display going on called Niki in the Garden. I brought my camera but didn’t see much of interest until we came across this skull. After shooting the sculpture, I shot some photos of the Lotus pond containing lotus flowers of all different colors. The light wasn’t bright enough to get any good shots inside. It rained on and off and we managed to miss the bulk of the downpours while we were outside.

After exploring the garden, we headed back downtown in search of a Thai restaurant on State Street. When we found the place was no longer there, we had pizza at Pizano’s. This raised my hopes for Chicago-style pizza. The crust wasn’t flaky and the sauce and ingredients were delicious. I still maintain that a brick-oven thin-crust is the best.

We walked off dinner down the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave.) hopping in and out of stores and ending back at the hotel where I dropped her off and headed back to the train station. I had many thoughts as I was people-watching on the way to the train. Its mostly fun to people-watch while playing music. Its sort of like your own ballet as people’s lives are choreographed to the music at hand… in this case, Swan Lake while waiting for the train.

Happy June everyone.