Recaps Recaps Recaps

It's been a few days and four states since I've written. The rundown:
Friday morning, before setting off to Chicago, I did some Googling to see what to see. And lo and behold, Friday was the first day of the ten-day Taste of Chicago food festival. It's huge. A hundred times the size of Taste of Boston. AND it's in the lovely Grant Park, not the sin-ugly City Hall plaza in the Bean.
But first I had to get there. Turns out, I ain't Sacajawea. My plan was to park at a southern stop of the commuter rail and take the train in. After getting lost a couple times in and around South Bend, I was cutting it close for the 1:26 train. A combination of speeding and praying for a late train got me to Gary, Indiana, just in time ... but the parking lot was full. I circled the nearby blocks a few times before finding a parking garage. Just in time to see the train pull in as I waited to turn at a red light.
Great.
So I decided to drive to the north of the city, park and take the el in. This was silly.
Silly, or fucking retarded.
I drove through Chicago, possibly the biggest clusterfuck of all time. I naively thought that 2 p.m., the middle of the afternoon, wouldn't be too busy. Right. All told, it took me five and a half hours to get from my motel in South Bend to downtown Chicago -- a distance of about 100 miles.
But Chicago! I was there for just a few hours, and stayed in basically a three block area, but wow. I'm a big fan.
The Taste was monstrous. Tons of people, tons of booths, a ferris wheel. I hadn't eaten yet and was ready to gorge myself. But, disappointingly, I only got down a slice of stuffed spinach pizza and five pierogis before my stomach cried Stop!
Boo.
So I walked just down the park to the Art Institute, hoping it was open and admission was cheap. Standing below one of the bronze lions, I read a sign that told me a ticket was $7 -- but, it didn't matter, because the museum closed at 5 p.m., just 20 minutes or so before.
Another disappointment, until I noticed some people walking in the front doors. I looked up again and only then noticed a giant banner announcing that Thursday and Friday nights from 5 to 9 p.m. are .... FREE.
Score.
Best museum I've seen in the states. Absolutely amazing collection of modern and contemporary paintings, and a whole wall of Monet's haystack series. Yay. Wandering the galleries, I turned a corner and saw ... get this ... Picasso's Old Guitarist. My favorite painting of all time, which I didn't know was in this museum halfway across the country, which just happened to be open and free at the time I was there.
Um .... score! This will sound lame, but in person, I couldn't breathe. No words. I swear I heard music, a lonely strumming.
I kept walking, eye-flirted with the faux-hawked guard, and left. This is when I nearly had a panic attack, having not spoken with anyone for about 30 hours. But I was rescued by Robert, a gas salesman from the South Side who struck up a conversation and gave me his number, in case I'm ever back in Chicago -- and don't have a boyfriend.
Then back to my car, which I thought would be simple, until I realized the purple line stops running downtown at 7:30. It was 9:30. I had to talk to two cops and three CTA employees before I found one who could tell me how to get back to the Bu.
I did, and after driving deliriously for an hour I stopped at an awful motel - the Adventure Inn, of course - near Six Flags. Basically clean, but shitty and full of people who talked outside my door in foreign languages and drank in the parking lot until 3 a.m. Bah.
Next post, Minneapolis.