Family Vacay VII: Day 9---Navy Pier, Jack, Julie and Nathaniel, and "Six"

We walked down State Street on our way to a rendezvous with Jack, Julie, and Nathaniel at Navy Pier. This was a good place to take portraits of the kids in the city where they were born.


The Chicago Theatre was built in 1921.


The only time I've been in was for an Indigo Girls concert.



I noted that Nina and Mari both had their heads tilted the same way.


Somehow my comment led to a giggling fit.


When the Wrigley Building was built on Michigan Avenue in 1920, it was the only major building north of the Chicago River.
 
The 65-story Marina Towers opened in 1963.
  I met Nathaniel's dad, Jack, in Odessa, in 1981, when I was in 9th grade, and we were friends throughout college. One night during our sophomore year when I had late night car trouble on a country road, Jack was the one I called to come help me out.

Of all the friends I have in my life, he and Jennifer Richardson are the two I have stayed in closest contact with over the years.

Jack visited me in Vermont when I was teaching there in the summer of 1990, and he visited me, Mari, and my parents when we were in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1996. Mari and I visited Jack and Julie in Louisville, Kentucky, when he played Iago in Othello, and we visited them in NYC in December 2001. They moved to Chicago when we still lived there in 2005.

When Emilio was born, Julie brought us lasagna (I was touched!). The first time we took Emilio to a restaurant (Ann Sather's in Andersonville--now closed), Jack and Julie went with us. When Nathaniel was born in June 2003, we were the first family or friends to see him. When Mari was pregnant with Nina and Pablo, Julie found us a bigger rental house to move in to (we did).
 
After the kids played hide-and-seek in the Navy Pier Atrium, we had lunch in the Pier food court. Mari and Emilio ordered "Dragon's Breath" dessert (liquid nitrogen-infused frozen Fruit Loops?), and Mari was happy to offer some to Nathaniel, who had been playing table hockey with Nina and Emilio.


We eventually made our way onto the lawn at the Western end of the Pier, and we spent a long stretch of time there, sitting on the grass, enjoying the weather, and talking. Nina got a huge kick out of Jack's story about how I was banned from the 7-11 when we were at TCU.
 
Pablo played the role of "Big Nate" evangelist.
 
The afternoon chat that preceded this pic was a trip highlight for me.


When Jack, Julie, and Nathaniel had to leave, we walked back to the Brown Line El station for a ride around the Loop.


After our ride on the El, we made it back to Michigan Avenue and The Magnificent Mile. We didn't do much shopping, but we ended up at the Foodlife Food Court in the Water Tower building--and that was a great find. Each customer who goes in gets a charge card. The food court has 14 kitchens with different menus. When you order a dish from each one to put on your tray, they load the charge on the card. I had my third Impossible Burger. It was a great place to take the kids. One of the reasons we tend to order too much food is that we never know what the kids will like. Here, if they order something they don't like, I could eat it, and we could them something else (in fact, everybody liked what they ordered, so that wasn't necessary).

I would like to have tried some other foods myself, but Nina and I had a date to see the new musical "Six."
I had seen an advertisement for it in the "Hamilton" program, and when I realized that it was not going to be dark and violent, I checked to see if any tickets were available when we were at Navy Pier. We may have gotten the last two.

My ticket was supposed to be obstructed view, but I could see 100% of the stage.
 
"Six" is American Idol (Abba night?) + a slight dusting of British history with a meta/feminist chaser. I thought it was 85% silly and 15% thought-provoking. Nina loved it, and I am so glad we went.

When we walked out of the theatre after 10 pm, crowds were gathering on the Pier for a fireworks show. It took us about 40 minutes to walk back to the hotel, and along the way, Nina and I continued our discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of living in the city. Earlier in the day, I'd had the same conversation with Emilio, in which I'd pointed out all the big city advantages. With Nina, I took the opposite position, because she, completely unlike Emilio, has difficulty thinking of many advantages to living in Ada, Oklahoma. One of the things I told her is that when you live in a big city, you often don't take advantage of all the attractions the way you do when you are visiting as a tourist. I also told her that spending time with good friends is often the best part of living anywhere. Put another way--when you gave good friends, it doesn't matter what you're doing or where you live, you can still have a good time.

Day 7: The Getty Museum

The Getty fortune was made in Oklahoma. Admission is free.

Above: "Seated Cardinal" (1975-1977) by Giacomo Manzu. Above: "The Vexed Man" (after 1770) by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.
Above: "Delusions of Grandeur" (1967) by Rene Magritte.
The Getty Museum was designed by Richard Meier.

After our visit, we had dinner at P. F. Chang's at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

Grand Tour, Day 4: Madrid Thursday

We planned a low-key morning on Thursday so that we would have energy for visiting the Prado in the evening when admission was free.

The day started with a visit to la Plaza de España with Jaime, who took the photo of us below beside the bronze statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, which was placed here in 1929.

After leaving the Plaza de España,  Jaime headed home, and the rest of us walked to the Egyptian Templo de Debod, which was brought to Madrid in 1970 when the construction of the Aswan Dam threatened to flood its original location. From there, we made our way to the Teleférico cable cars that would lift us over the Manzanares River to the Casa de Campo park. Maria Rosa joined us for the ride.
The Casa de Campo used to be royal hunting grounds. On November 8, 1936, the park was a launching site for an attack on Madrid by 20,000 Fascist soldiers loyal to Franco. They were supported by German Panzers under the command of a German officer, while the German Condor Legion dropped bombs on the city from the sky. Throngs cheered the first International Brigade when they marched down la Gran Via to the front where they helped repulse the initial Fascist attack. Madrid radio stations called on the city's citizens to support the Republican cause with a rallying cry made famous by Dolores Ibarurri: "¡No pasarán!" ('They shall not pass!'). The struggle remained tense through December 1936, but Madrid did not fall to the Fascists until March 28, 1939.


In the photo above, the Ruiz Benton Three check out three of Madrid's tallest buildings in the distance. All of these were built since I was last in Madrid. From left to right, that's the Torre de Cristal (2008), the Torre PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2008), and the Torre Cespa (2009). Over to their right, you can just see the tops of the twin Puertas de Europa towers. I remember them from my time in Madrid (1989-1994), though they were not officially finished until 1996.

When we returned from la Casa de Campo, we walked to Heladeria Palazzo, where they make the best gelato--Italian-style ice cream. According to my good friend the Internet, French-style ice cream (like the kind you get at Braum's and Baskin-Robbins) has more cream and more air than Italian-style gelato, which has less cream, less air and more milk and sugar. Palazzo was my favorite gelateria when I lived in Madrid. I got banana and pineapple flavors this time. It was delish.

After having lunch at the house, we headed to el Prado, where we found a looooooooong line of people waiting to get in. As we approached the entrance, we passed a Johnny Depp-style Mad Hatter who was letting a live white mouse crawl around on him. I did not encourage the children to interact with him and his rodent-friend, and I'm glad they didn't display any enthusiasm at the prospect.

When we came in to el Prado, we picked up a guide to the museum that features 50 masterpieces. Getting through that list motivated Emilio.

They don't allow photos in the Prado, so I have borrowed these the images from my good friend the Internet.

"The Garden of Earthly Delights" (ca.1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch

Gimena met us inside in the Bosch room--one of the most crowded rooms we visited in any museum in Europe. We eventually got close-up looks at all the paintings, though. When we did, I encouraged the kids to take turns with me describing the bizarre elements we saw (see below).

  This amazing link makes it possible to do the exploring from home.

Detail from "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

"Charon Crossing the River Styx" (1520-24) by Joachim Patinir

The painting above mixes Greek and Christian mythology as Charon's boat offers a human soul a choice between taking an a branch of the river Styx that has full bushes on its banks (this one leads to hell) or the branch that has rocks on its banks (this one leads to heaven).  The soul sitting in the boat is looking at the bushy branch, and the bow of the boat is slightly inclined in that direction.

The Spanish collection in el Prado begins with 12th century frescos from the Hermitage of Vera Cruz de Maderuelo. The frescos were transferred to canvas and then moved onto a structure within the Prado that was specially designed to resemble the walls of the chapel they were moved from. I know this process is a real thing, but transferring ancient frescos to canvas and then again to other walls?!? I clearly don't understand how paint works.

Maderuelo is 60 miles northeast of Segovia. The Hermitage is still there. I guess its walls are bare.

Detail from the Hermitage of the Vera Cruz de Maderuelo fresco (12th century)

The frescos tell Biblical stories, and I told Pablo that these were the medieval equivalents of graphic novels.  And the saints were superheroes. Neither of those descriptions quite managed to get him as interested in the frescos as I hoped they might.

Detail from the Hermitage of the Vera Cruz de Maderuelo fresco (12th century)

 Before the museum closed, we saw about 25% of the collection and 14 of the masterpieces in our guide, all of them from the Flemish and Spanish collections.

Afterwards, los abuelos met us near the Goya statue on the north side of the museum and joined us on a walk down the Paseo del Prado. I took the photos below of Nina near the Goya statue.


 Along the way, we got chips (Pablo) and ice cream (Nina and Emi), and walked through an arts fair. Pablo gives a thumbs up to the sign hanging outside City Hall (1919) in la plaza de Cibeles.

I took these photos of Nina on a traffic island on la calle de Alcalá. In the distance behind her, you can see the Metropolis Building (1911), near the start of la Gran Via.We eventually made our way to la Plaza de Colón, where I told the kids about how I had to come to this plaza early in the morning to make phone calls home to Arkansas when I was a student. It was very expensive.

I was teaching in Madrid on November 16, 1989, when I wandered into the plaza to find that thousands of people had blocked the streets for the funeral procession for La Pasionaria. I had my camera with me, for some reason, and I must have looked like a professional photographer (I had a ponytail at the time), because the police did not stop me from positioning myself on the clear side of the barricades in front of the procession. At one point, I climbed out on the second story ledge of a nearby bank to get a better shot.  I sent these photos to Lisa, and she included them in a magazine about the Spanish Civil War that she put together for a high school class she was in. I have now scanned them and added them to this blog.

Day 9: Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore, Iron Mountain Road, Custer State Park

The day begins 33 stories beneath the surface.

After walking the Jewel Cave Scenic Trail, we headed to Mt. Rushmore (we saw the Crazy Horse monument from a distance, but opted not to pay a high price for a closer look).
After walking the Rushmore trail, we drove Iron Mountain Road.

We ended the day with a return to Custer State Park, where we walked the Badger Clark trail and had another dinner at the Blue Bell Lodge.