Desserts, St. Louis, Chicago, and Further

Well, the weather has changed again, the leaves are falling and changing in earnest, the ‘flu season has begun, and the time has come for me to truly put the summer to rest.

After returning from our grand camping adventure, when Patrice went back to work, and Gaël had to soon start school, it was a flurry of activity of cleaning sleeping bags and tents, airing out camping containers, reorganizing the camping equipment in the box, and putting everything away until the next season. Our wonderful friends, Gretchen and Mikeljon, brought their lovely daughters Elise and Audrey, as well as Charlotte, the family dog, out from Washington, D.C. to visit, and were here to send off Gaël for his first day of 5th grade.

Gaël and Charlotte, first day of school

 Also during this down time, we explored the local sights with Aude, rode the bus, took her shopping, showed her the University of Illinois campus. 

  

And she made desserts.  She took my favorite cookbook, America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, and made an amazing fruit tart.  And because she had eggs left over from the pastry cream of the fruit tart, she decided to make chocolate mousse, from a traditional French recipe.  Both were incredible, and I encouraged Aude to follow her talents; we talked about food as art, and what it means to be a pastry chef in France.

Gaël returned to school, and Aude and I took a day to drive to St. Louis.  I don’t know St. Louis all that well, but it’s a lovely city, with plenty to do, and the tourist places are extremely accessible.  No trip to St. Louis is complete without a trip to the top of the Gateway Arch, and Aude was enchanted with the view from the top; I managed to overcome my claustrophobia and take the little connected pods, which creak their way to the top.  I silently wondered how many people per year freaked out in those little cars.  Aude took tons of photos of the street views and the architecture.  I told her about coming to St. Louis in the summer of 1993, when the water came up to the steps of the Arch, and Laclede’s Landing was completely inaccessible.  The Mighty Mississippi has an incredible power.

 

Selfie at the top of the Arch

After visiting the Arch, and watching the ancient movie about its construction (can’t we update this, people?!), we walked to lunch in Laclede’s Landing.After lunch, we went to Union Station.  Once a train station, this gorgeous building had been turned into a shopping mall in the mid-1980s.  I had shopped there in the 1990s, but hadn’t returned since then, and was shocked to find a sort of “ghost mall.”  Most shops were closed, there were very few people about, and only the hotel still seemed to be going in full swing; we found a store for cheap St. Louis souvenirs, and bought some things for Aude to take back to France.  The Hard Rock Café was blaring music to no one as we left, and I was depressed at the lack of vitality of this once-beautiful edifice.  I didn’t want to go to another mall (I’m not a big shopping person and I generally avoid malls at all costs), so we had to choose between the botanical gardens or the Central West End for boutique shopping; we didn’t have enough time to do both and get home at a reasonable hour.  I knew which one would win, but Aude did entertain briefly the idea of seeing the botanical gardens.  The sun was hot, though, and the Central West End was a good place to duck into shops and cool off; most of the shops were a little pricey for what she wanted to buy, but it’s certainly fun to look, and to walk through the stunning neighborhoods near St. Louis’s famous Barnes Hospital.  We finished off the day with a quick drive through the beautiful Forest Park, then we got onto the highway home.  Three hours each way was enough time for Aude and me to get to know each other just a little better, and I heard family stories, boyfriend stories, and school stories; we also checked out St. Louis radio stations to make the time pass more quickly.

The time was coming quickly for Aude to leave, and we had not yet explored the last frontier, Chicago.  Aude had never really been in a big city before, and her dream has always been to go to New York.  We had the challenge of showing her that this city on the shores of Lake Michigan had so much life and culture and things to see, she would enjoy it as much as a trip to New York.  Tall order!  But the wide-eyed 17-year-old packed her bags for the last time, and we left early Saturday morning for the big city.  Before leaving, however, we had to do the last, very important things to show she had been in Champaign-Urbana:  we had to go to the sweetcorn festival, we had to have dinner at the Esquire, and we had to write on the wall.  The sweetcorn festival was brief, but fun, and we got to listen to some music which Aude really liked; Gaël also got to climb, which is always a favorite.  

Not afraid of heights

When I told Aude how her uncle and I had met by banging heads at the Esquire Lounge many years ago—and the involvement of the peanut in the whole affair—she wanted desperately to go there.  We sat outside at the metal table with the umbrella and the Friday night happy-hour goers and ordered big burgers and munched on peanuts from their shells.  Aude was fascinated with American bar life, and we people-watched for an hour in the setting sun.  

We totally forgot to write on the wall.  We would have to save it until the morning on our way out of town.

A former colleague, Nancy, and a close acquaintance, Joanna, came up with the idea for a chalkboard wall in downtown Champaign where everyone could contribute to complete the sentence, “Before I Die…”  I wanted Aude to be able to put her desires in writing in front of everyone; she wrote, “I want to travel in the world.”   Not exactly perfectly grammatical English, but the sentiment was there.   

Patrice’s desire was similar, “going around the world,” (before I pointed out that his sentence also was ungrammatical, but that he had no excuse.)

Mine was simply “I want to raise my son to be a happy adult.”  

And my son’s sentence?

“I like pie.”  Of course.

The drive to Chicago was uneventful, thankfully.  We drove straight to the Millenium Park parking garage to save time and show Aude the brilliant morning splendor of the Chicago skyline.  We would spend the next few hours walking, doing the tourist thing. 

Millenium Park, the bean, walking up the coast to Navy Pier, sun beating on our heads, eating lunch at the Billy Goat, taking the Chicago River architecture tour, walking up Michigan Avenue to Watertower Place, seeing the hotels, the stores, the street performers.  

We wandered back to our car, then headed north and west to our friends Kim and Cliff’s house.  They and their adorable sons, Sammy and Nico, live in a three-flat they’ve been remodeling in Wicker Park. 

We ate appetizers and drank wine, then went out for a neighborhood walk and a dinner at a semi-fancy Italian place, where we just kept ordering more food.  We admired the Wicker Park architecture through the windows as you can do best at night on our way back.  The kids went to bed and the adults stayed up a bit longer to chat in the back garden.

The next day would be Aude’s last day in the U.S.  We ate a lovely late breakfast, then headed to the Bucktown Arts Festival on foot; I do love that about bigger cities, where you can do so much without ever getting into your car.  The day became quite a scorcher as we explored the tents and expos.  The kids could play at the park playground next to the art fair, and there was music and food. 

Aude bought the last of her gifts for the family.  We headed back to retrieve our things and take Aude to the airport early in the afternoon with plenty of time to spare, as you never know how traffic will be to O’Hare.  For some reason, I once again had trouble translating/explaining the whole transporting liquids and luggage requirements thing to Aude, but we managed to re-pack her things and get her checked in in plenty of time.  We verified that the flight was on time, explained again about security in the U.S., security in France, passport control in France, and clearing customs.  We checked to make sure she had her passport, her letter from her parents, her wallet, her phone.  We gave her extra money for dinner, and watched her go through security.  After that, it would be silly to wait, so we checked the boards again and proceeded slowly to the parking lot to head back to C-U.  

Unfortunately, about the time we were having dinner at Lincoln Highway about a third of the way home, Aude was finding out her flight would be delayed about four hours.  She got a dinner voucher and was able to get Wi-Fi to contact her parents by email, and she handled the situation beautifully as far as we know.  I felt really bad for her, knowing we couldn’t have done anything, and knowing also that her parents had planned a little outing for her on the other end in Paris, not wanting to waste the opportunity of being there.  I wasn’t sure I would want to spend my day after a nine-hour overnight flight wandering the streets and by-ways and tourist sites of Paris, but Aude was such a good sport, and said she would enjoy the contrast of seeing two cities—Chicago and Paris—back-to-back, both for the very first time.  Ah, the energy of youth.

We returned home to a house that felt more than slightly empty.  We would miss our travel companion for the past month.  Gaël would miss the “big sister” he’d temporarily experienced.  And I would miss the desserts.

What’s next, you might ask?  Isn’t this a blog about travel adventures?

Well, stay tuned, because there are plans galore afoot!  Not to mention the fact that, mid-life crisis travel adventures are not always about traveling to a different city, area, region, or country.  Sometimes the adventure is just simply traveling through mid-life, having a family, learning to change.  There is often a no more rocky, exciting adventure than that.