Doors slamming shut at 5

As discussed in my last post, I'll be traveling by train to Chicago in just over a week.  I'll arrive in Chicago about 2 p.m., on Tuesday, November 12, and will meet with my friends, Jim and Dorothy, from Indiana who will arrive the following morning.  

Fun and laughter will ensue.

But how will I amuse myself on Tuesday, while awaiting my Indiana friends' arrival?.  The answer was easy, I thought.  This is Chicago, city of famous museums.  My hotel will be within walking distance of their excellent art museum, the Art Institute of Chicago.  I'll browse the art, and take a break to have dinner in  one of their museum cafes. As I have done in many other museums, worldwide.

But now I discover that the art museum is closed entirely on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  I guess it's my own fault for arriving on such an awkward day of the week.  We plan to attend the local opera company's production of The Marriage of Figaro Wednesday night.  Dorothy arranged purchase of the tickets, and I'm not sure which other days that week would have had available tickets.

Not that it really matters, because if I had arrived on, say, Friday, I would have found that the museum was open, but open only until 5 p.m.  In fact, of the five days per week that the museum is open, it closes on each day at 5 p.m.  Except Thursdays when it's open until 8 p.m.  Even with a reduced admission price for seniors of $26, I wouldn't want to pay for only a couple of hours on one of their non-Thursday days, with a 5 o'clock deadline hanging over my head as I rushed from exhibit to exhibit.

Well, shoot!  But there are other museums, right?.  The Field Museum of Natural History?  Open daily, but only until 5 p.m.  Museum of Science and Industry?  Closed Tuesdays.  

This is weird, I thought.  I'm sure Seattle's museums are more available.  In fact, for many years I attended various film series at the Seattle Art Museum.  The films began at 7:30, and business was still bustling at that hour at the ticket office.  I also remember attending the excellent traveling da Vinci exhibit at the Art Museum several years ago -- I attended in the evening.  

I opened the Seattle Art Museum's web page, just to make sure my memory was correct.

Yikes!  The Seattle Art Museum is now closed Mondays and Tuesdays.  Open other days until 5 p.m., except for an extension to 8 p.m. one day per month.  And the 5 o'clock closing of museums seems to be a standard fact of life nowadays, across the country.  At least there are a number of articles on-line, plaintively asking the question: Why not stay open later?

Lack of funding and of available staffing appear to be frequent replies.  There are other issues involved, as well, the discussion of which is beyond the scope of this blog post, but none of them relieves my disgruntlement. Nor solves the problem of how to amuse myself on a Tuesday night in Chicago.

But -- lo and behold! -- I finally learn that the Shedd Aquarium is open Tuesdays until 9 p.m.  I'd prefer to study Raphaels and Picassos to watching fish in a tank.  But it's been a while since I've visited an aquarium -- and I was last at the Shedd as a 14-year-old -- so it may be a good way to spend a few hours, a week from Tuesday.  

It beats watching TV in a hotel room.

California Zephyr to Chicago

 

Just a bit over three weeks ago, I arrived home in Seattle after 18 days in Italy.  Glad I'd been away, glad to be home again.  Glad to greet my two cats and to revel in their (ambiguous) signs of warm welcome.  ("Can we go outside, NOW?")

But almost before I'd unpacked my bags, and certainly before I wrote my trip summary for this blog, I was asking myself, "Where next?"

Well, really, I'm not rushing back out the door.  The cats require a certain amount of appeasing before they'll countenance another of their "master's" disappearances.  I'll be hanging around all October.

But in about five weeks, I continue my recent annual railway pilgrimages from the West Coast to Chicago.  I plan to repeat my 2022 trip on the California Zephyr, a 51-hour ride from San Francisco to Chicago, reputed by many to be the most beautiful railroad ride in the United States.  (The Coast Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles offers worthy competition, in my opinion.)  I did consider the nearly four-day Canadian ride from Vancouver to Toronto, but I decided to save that for a future year.

I'll fly down to San Francisco from Seattle, stay overnight, and leave San Francisco the next morning at 7:15 a.m. by Amtrak bus over the Bay Bridge.   Once I'm across the Bay in Emeryville, I climb aboard the Zephyr -- my home until 2:39 p.m., two days later.  (Assuming always that the train runs on time.)  

The next morning, I meet up with my friends Jim and Dorothy, who will be arriving by bus from their home in West Lafayette, Indiana.  We met up in a similar manner last winter, after my arrival in Chicago from L.A. on the Southwest Chief.  And like last year, we'll spend part of our time together enjoying the performance opportunities that Chicago offers.  

First, and most seriously, we'll see Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro as offered by the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

We follow up Mozart with a somewhat lighter experience the next day: Drunk Shakespeare, a play within a play, in which four sober actors and one drunk actor try to perform Shakespeare.  As the billing eloquently describes the experience:

Hilarity and mayhem ensue while the four sober actors try and keep the script on track. Every show is different depending on who is drinking... and what they're drinking!

Craft cocktails are available for purchase throughout the show.

Find us at 182 N Wabash Ave, in the Chicago Loop, for speakeasy vibes, a full cocktail bar, and a whole lot of Shakespeare.

It sounds educational.  I'll try to sober up by the time my plane leaves for Seattle the following morning.