Family Vacay VIII: Day 11 and Year 25--Return to Andersonville and the Movies

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of our wedding in Chinchón, Spain, we took the kids to see our last home in Chicago at 1709 W. Carmen.
This is the house that Julie found us when Mari was pregnant with the twins. We moved here in June 2007. Throughout that month of June, each night, I transported our possessions from our house on Foster to the house on Carmen so that I could take advantage of the free rental vehicles we could use between midnight and 6 a.m.). I celebrated my 40th birthday here. This is the home Nina and Pablo came to when they were born. I lived here when I finished my dissertation, I came to this house when I graduated with my Ph.D. (don't miss this last link!), and we lived here when I landed a tenure-track job at East Central University. In short, we only lived here one year, but it was one of the most meaningful of the 25 years Mari and I have been married.

When we got to 1709 W. Carmen on Sunday morning, a young man and his child were sweeping the sidewalk.  His wife came out to greet us and blessed our photo-taking request. They had lived there for a few years ago and let us know that the house was still owned by their next-door neighbor, Art, the real estate agent.

One of the things I told Emilio about our life in the big city was that within the big cities there are smaller neighborhoods, like Andersonville, that foster a sense of community that is not unlike the kind of community that you typically associated with small towns. During our first several years in Ada, we knew much less about our neighbors than we had in Andersonville.

As we were talking, a young woman came by walking her dog. As some of us interacted with her dog, she heard us talking about how we used to live in the neighborhood. She said her father knew most people who lived on the block and asked us if we remembered him by name. We didn't.  But I did mention that there was a man who lived nearby who used to circle the block every Sunday morning with his kids, picking up trash as a service project alternative (I guessed) to attending church. As it turned out, that was her father! And she was probably one of the kids who was walking with him. Connecting with her in this spontaneous way was a comforting reassurance that the Chicago we engaged with has not entirely disappeared from this earth.


After we left Carmen, we headed to 1350 W. Foster. This is the home we brought Emilio to after he was born. I was working on my Ph.D. at the time, and when Mari went back to work after her maternity leave, we took parenting shifts.  I was a full-time Emi-dad until she got home from work every day, and then I would work on my dissertation. I wore the Baby Bjorn a lot.  And Emilio used to like to stand in the window of our third story apartment and watch for the city buses.  His mama rode one to go to and from work every day.  On September 15, 2006, he took his first steps here, and Mari captured the moment on video.

Good times.

Our destination was the Jewel supermarket by the Berwyn El stop (where I would also pick up the Zipcar I used to move us from Foster to Carmen). I have fond memories of catching trains on that platform and heading north to Evanston to see a movie at the Cinemark. I would read on the train and eat either before the movie or after at one of the "offices" where I would work on my dissertation (favorite Evanston offices included the Corner Bakery and Burger King).

I would also take trains heading south to go to Cubs games and buy tickets at the gate.

Good times.


Back on Clark Street, we stopped by the Women and Children First bookstore (closed for Memorial Day) and took photos with new wall art.

And we visited new stores, including: Alleycat Comics.
Note for future vacations: bookstores provide an inexpensive way to entertain the kids and welcome shelter from thunderstorms!

After driving to Evanston and checking in to the Holiday Inn, we had lunch at Epic Burger (I ordered my third Impossible of the trip).


Our 25th wedding anniversary was the perfect day to reflect on our years in Chicago, where we laid so much important groundwork for the path our life together would take in the years that have followed.
We checked in to a hotel in Evanston, and, just as we did 25 years previously, on the evening of our wedding, we headed to the movies.
Twenty-five years ago, we saw So I Married an Axe Murderer. This year, with the kids in tow, we headed to my favorite movie theaters to see Disney's new Aladdin. I went in expecting that the "Whole New World" song, when Aladdin takes Jasmine on a magic carpet ride, would remind me of the many traveling adventures Mari and I have embarked on in our years together: Morocco, Ecuador, Bulgaria, Istanbul, Damascus, Jericho, Petra, Jerusalem, London, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beijing, Hong Kong, Guilin, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Perito Moreno, Los Angeles, Grand Canyon, Sequoia National Park, Yellowstone, New Orleans, Seattle, the Everglades, D.C., New York City--and that's all before we had kids and started traveling with them.

After the movie, though, I told Mari that now that we are parents, I feel less like Aladdin and Jasmine and more like the carpet and the monkey!

Either way, it has been a glorious, 25-year magic carpet ride.

And as far as three wishes go, how could we have done better than Emilio, Pablo, and Nina?

Day 9: Las Vegas

Mari and I began our 24th wedding anniversary in L.A. taking pictures with an Emmy-Award winner, and then we headed to Vegas--just as we planned to when we said our vows in Chinchon in 1994.

Out eventual destination was St. George, Utah.
We had lunch in Las Vegas at the "America" restaurant in the New York, New York casino under a giant, three-dimensional map of the United States.

And then we took a long walk down the strip to get to Ammorino, the super-expensive artisanal gelateria that some us got hooked on when we were in Paris last year.

The kids were mildly traumatized by all the skin being displayed on the strip--something they were more oblivious to when we were in Amsterdam last year or on Bourbon Street three years ago.

The highlight of the day for me was the drive down I-15 northeast of Mesquite, Arizona through the Virgin River Canyon, southwest of St. George, Utah--our destination for the night. There was enough light for us to be amazed, but not enough for photos. Here's a link to a video someone else took less than 2 months before we were there, heading north on I-15. It gets interesting about 2 minutes in.

Grand Tour, Day 6: Madrid Saturday, Anniversary 23

On Saturday, la abuela joined our continuing Madrid nostalgia tour. We started with a walk to Carlos Arniches street en el barrio de La Latina, where I lived at #8 from 1992 to 1993. Arniches (1866-1943) was a playwright, best known for his one-act musical comedies (zarzuelas) featuring working class characters. When Franco launched the Spanish Civil War, Arniches moved to Buenos Aires. I did not know this when I lived on Carlos Arniches street.

In the summer of 1993, I moved right around the corner from Arniches street into a top floor apartment at Mira el Rio Alta, #6, where I roomed with Abraham, who was from Columbia. He spent most of the time in his boyfriend's apartment, so I almost always had the place to myself.

I was living on Mira el Rio Alta when Mari and I got married in May 1994 and when Mom and Dad came to visit us that summer before we left for China. My apartment was on the top floor, and it featured a long, beautiful terrace with a southward vista. Along with our house on Carmen in Chicago and our current home in Ada, the apartment on Mira el Rio Alta was of the most beautiful places I've lived.



From el barrio de La Latina, we headed northeast toward the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians. On the way, we couldn't resist the temptation of these pastries at the Granier pastelería at #5 calle de Mesón de Paredes. I hear they were tasty. But more importantly, they were called: "fartons."
You will notice that Pablo is wearing an FC Barcelona tshirt ("Barca"). That night Barca was slated to compete with Alavés for the Copa del Rey--the Spanish championship. The game would be played just a few blocks from abuelo and abuela's apartment. There were many fans from both teams who had traveled to Madrid for the game. Surprisingly, the fans of tiny Alavés dominated the streets, but one group of Barca fans spied Pablo's t-shirt and rewarded him with a "Copa del Rey" hat. Emilio immediately regretted that he hadn't worn his colors. Fortunately, Emi has a brother who likes to share. In the photo below, it's Emi wearing the hat.

As we got closer to the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians, we stopped to take a photo in front of this quotation from Cervantes. It translates as: "He who reads a lot and walks a lot sees a lot and knows a lot." Words to live by.


Here it is: the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians (and a sunspot that seems to illuminate the curious father in the middle of our pic). The convent was built in 1609.

When Miguel de Cervantes died in 1616, his remains were buried here, as he requested. The Trinitarians had helped pull together the funds needed to ransom the injured marine from the Ottoman pirates who held him captive in Algeria between 1575 and 1580. When the convent underwent reconstruction in 1673, records of the location of Cervantes' tomb were lost.

They remained lost until 2015, when archaeologists unearthed the skeletal remains of a man with a shattered left shoulder. They believe it is Cervantes's shoulder, which was injured by gunfire during the naval Battle of Lepanto near Patras, Greece in 1571. Cervantes lost the use of his left hand as a result of that injury.

The message on the plaque above translates as: "To / Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra / who by his last wish lies / in this convent of the Trinitarian order / to whom he principally owed his rescue / The Spanish Academy / Cervantes was born in 1547 and died in 1616."


Twenty-three years to the day before we took this picture, Mari and I got married in Chinchón, which is 30 miles southeast of Madrid. The afternoon after the ceremony, having nothing else to do, we resorted to our favorite pastime: going to the movies. We'd seen all the movies that were out, except for one: So I Married an Axe Murderer. It was an indisputable choice. And as it happens, it was funny. We saw it in the cinema you can see behind us in the picture above. It is currently closed for renovations, but it is scheduled to reopen in the fall.

After lunching at home, team Ruiz Benton rendezvoused with team Gimena at the house of a longtime family friend whose son was celebrating a birthday. When we left the party, Maria Rosa picked up the kids and escorted them back to her house on the bus so that Mari and I could make a quick getaway for our anniversary date. Our destination: Mastropiero, the Argentinian pizza place in el barrio Malasaña. We went here on our first date in February 1991 after we'd seen the (forgettable) movie Avalon.


Mastropiero has moved across the street from where it used to be, but the place looks the same.
I totally lucked out.  Really.  In retrospect, I realize the stunning amount of good fortune it took for me to fall into this deeply satisfying relationship.

After pizza, we rush-walked home to watch La Copa del Rey. It occurred to me that 26 years ago, I had zero interest in the low-scoring sport. Now, some of my all-time favorite sports-fan moments involve soccer goals (scored by my children).


Messi scores first. Barca wins. We all win.

Day 11: The Archway and Rock City Park

Kearney Nebraska's Archway--a Disney-produced, interstate-spanning, museum experience commemorating Westward expansion--was not on my to-do list, but curiosity was strong, so we bought tickets.

The kids had the free, outside maze all to themselves and loved it.

The Archway is not designed for systematic minds that want to read all the words, but the sound effects and first-person narratives enriched the immersive experience. I give it high marks for showmanship and low marks for sensitivity to the narratives of ethnic minorities.

We went out of our way down unpaved roads to get to Rock City Park near Minneapolis in Kansas and did not regret it.

We had the park all to ourselves.

A great place for climbing.

Stone cow patties?

A stone ropes course?
A perfect place for "capture the flag."
And "Hide and Seek."

Best playground ever?

The ideal place, the ideal time, and the ideal company for celebrating 22 years of marriage.

Photo by Emilio.