Happy Memories

It sounds a little pathetic to say that the last month has been stressful. Bigger things have happened; worse things; harder things, are happening to people all around us. But leaving behind friends from the last three years has been difficult.

Life will be different in London, exciting, yes, but change always involves leaving the old behind. Even when it means coming back to what is familiar.

The whirlwind which was packing up, saying goodbye, and booking tickets in less than two weeks didn’t help. I’ve only just in the last week sat down to look at some of the (hundreds of) photographs we took on vacation in Yellowstone. I’d utterly forgotten taking this shot.

Amongst the pebbles

And corny as it may sound, carrying around the awesome memories of the last three years will keep us going long after we’ve moved into our own home and we’ve started to make new friends all over again.

Memories

Happy Love Thursday, a group feature hosted by ShutterSisters.

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History Safari

Anyone who has read through my archives will probably already know that a perfect vacation for me involves lots of history and some art galleries or musems. It won’t surprise you to hear then that Boston’s unique history safari got my geeky side all fired up and I approached the weekend with a desire to see as much as possible without provoking the wrath of a not-so-very-culture-loving tourism partner.

So, on Saturday morning, after Friday’s crash course in the beginnings of American Independence, I left my long suffering husband to enjoy a morning in the shops and went off to do a literary walking tour. Literary history is my own favorite brand of weekend activity, and Boston did not disappoint. The British colony of America’s first publishing house, Boston’s public library, the Parker House Hotel where Emerson and Hawthorne attended the Saturday club, a house where Louise May Alcott and her family stayed for just a while…

It was fun, and reminded me how much I had remembered of my Nineteenth Century American Literature classes from University. I felt quite the academic. Even more so when my husband agreed to sunbathe for an hour while I looked around the Longfellow House out in Cambridge.

I’ve poked fun at the ‘show homes’ of US history before, but the Longfellow House is the antithesis of replica joints of ham. Quite honestly it was amazing. The whole house is a piece of history and every item in there is real, and definitely historical. From Longfellow’s bed, to his study, and the front door at which people you have read about in books had stood.

The house was also campaign headquarters for George Washington in 1775/76, so it wasn’t just a tour down literary history’s memory lane. It was literally stuffed with objects with stories, paintings and furniture with a famous name attached. I know I sound like a geek, but you have to go. You have to book a weekend in Boston straightaway just so that you can visit this National Park Service, National Historic Site.

If you’re in the area, sure, pop into Harvard and make sure to take stupid photographs on the T ride over like the following:

Oooh it goes by so fast

but mostly, spend the ridiculous sum of $3 and an hour of your life being amazed.

Public Service Announcement over.

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So…Boston

I remember thinking, when we were in Boston, just how like London it felt and how interesting it is that people should travel so many miles to recreate the home they just left. Boston really did feel European, or more accurately, British, in its layout, its small winding streets, and the quite extensive trash collecting in the gutters. It certainly highlighted for us the, quite frankly, remarkable job Streets and Sanitation do each night in Chicago.

Do not misunderstand me. It was all those words that people throw around when visiting historical towns and cities; it was quaint, characterful, charming, and lively.

It was also mentally exhausting.

Visiting Boston is comparable to being on a safari. Specifically, it holds similarities to places like West Midlands Safari Park, which, although I loved the experience, was a pale comparison to a leisurely jaunt in a jeep around the 55 000 hectares of Pilanesberg Game Reserve in South Africa.

Ladies and Gentlemen let us embark on our historical tour of Downtown Boston, be sure to follow the red line, which is painted on 2.5 miles of Boston sidewalk. You are also advised to keep your hands as close to your body as possible at all times, beware of the idiot tourists who come to a total stop right in the center of the sidewalk, and leave all sense of personal space behind.

I exaggerate. However, the idea of following the famous Freedom Trail walking tour was soon abandoned in favor of taking in the sights using our own agenda, and doing our best to ignore everyone else who was trying to absorb as much of the city as possible on a sunny summer weekend.

We managed to find some quiet spots:

Through the window

And it was wonderful to be close to the sea again:

Oh I do love to be beside the Seaside

But it was one exhausting look back at the history of the United States.

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Where to begin…..

Just don’t know where to start.

I have stories of bears, moose, elk and geysers. I’m really looking forward to sharing how I found one more thing I’m allergic too, and added another doctor to my list of ‘medical centers visited on holiday’.

But I think it’s adequate to say this:

On the way back from our vacation, the family are sitting watching CNN at Billings airport. We’re about to fly to Denver, where we have a twenty minute cushion before the O’Hare flight. If you know me at all, you’ll know that I am not all that calm. I am a little bit on edge, with the short time to make the change, the increasingly late departure time of the Billings flight and the idea of two or three hours in flight before getting home to Chicago.

Imagine then the panic and arm flapping when I glanced down at my passport and read the expiration date of my US Visa.

We do not have four weeks to calmly pack, say farewells, do Chicago things ‘one last time’. We have one week to vacate the country or else. As of the 1st September, we’re not going to be living in Chicago any more.

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How to choose a vacation spot

When we look at taking a vacation, I have unusual criteria for selecting the venue. The potential satisfaction value of a place is directly proportional to the number of plaques on display. Sunshine and pretty scenery are, of course, a bonus and some of kind of record-holding can topple the balance in the favor of a particular spot. We once had a memorable almost-trip to the highest waterfall in Queensland. Which we only took because we wanted to say we’d been to the highest waterfall in Queensland. Now we just have a very long story about how we got to within a mile or so of it.

All of which is long way of saying that when faced with the decision of where to go for a recent weekend break, the place with the most number of historic buildings won hands down. Sunshine in Florida? Good choice. Back to nature in Door County? Sounds promising. A whopping 85% of the buildings in Galena are in a National Register Historic District. The only choice. Our camera has Repetitive Strain Injury from flexing its shutter muscles for all the photographs of plaques.

We managed to put the photo equipment down for long enough to find the most expensive restaurant in town. (In a suitably old building, naturally.) The Perry Street Brasserie was fantastic, which was a real relief to me as I’d picked it from a review in the New York Times Travel section. I’d read about a chef’s special of lobster in a curry sauce that had swung the voting in its favor. It was well worth facing the ire of the maître d’, who was not happy about our turning up without a reservation. No fewer than three members of wait staff approached us to ask if we’d already booked. The look of concern in each one’s face was more troubling than the last as they muttered darkly something about having to ask Mary. Mary turned out to be most happy to accommodate us.

Usually, we base our travel itineraries on paper guide books, but this time I did a lot of research online. That’s also how I found Clarks Again breakfast – a seemingly real old-fashioned breakfast diner that was complete with leather swivelly top counter stools. No need for booking a table here.

After the civil war cannons, we took a trip to the showpiece of the city – a house donated to President Grant by the good citizens of Galena. I love walking around those show houses, set up to look “as it would when General and Mrs Grant visited for their summers”. Scratchy replica horse hair chairs and shiny plastic joints of ham included.

A successful weekend, I’d say.

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