Sand, dusk, and Sandusky

That sign said Climax.

Who on earth would name a town Climax. Are we going in?

No, says Bruce, Climaxes are a dime a dozen in the US. There is another Climax in Minnesota and it has a neighbouring town called Savage and there was once a headline in the local paper, true story, which said “Savage Woman Arrested In Climax”.

So, we’re not going in.

It is a lovely day. The Michigan sky is soft blue with streaks of high cloud and some bands of frothy low cloud. The temperature is in the 80s.

We are travelling east on I94, otherwise known

as the Red Arrow Highway.

Cornfields, soy, cornfields.

We hurtle past Battle Creek, famous home of Kelloggs. I had never envisaged cornflakes as coming from an endless world of corn fields, but of course! We try to smell cornflakes cooking. Wow. Kellog has its own airport.

Down the highway is a massive casino, more or less in the middle of nowhere. The carpark is really crowded. Oh, and you can buy fireworks there, too. Hmm

Then I have a panic attack. My laptop? I don’t remember packing it. Yes, I double checked the room before leaving, but I don’t remember packing it. I can’t reach the computer case to look. I’m in a cold sweat.

Bruce takes an exit and we stop at a big servo in a place called Marshall where I see the computer safely in the bag where it is supposed to be. Phew. And Phew again.

We go into the servo shop to buy coffee and have a pee. Surprisingly, it is a massive shop full of absolutely everything - a wall of cigarettes,

liquor, groceries, snacks, dog food, toilet freshener and wines from all over the world. I grab a bottle of Kiwi Savvy for $10 and do a double-take at the sight of jumbo jars of boiled eggs in beetroot juice. America never ceases to surprise me.

The loos are another wonderful thing. Here in the somewhere nowhere at this bizarre mixed store, there are clean and well maintained toilets for customers and travellers. There are conveniences in supermarkets, too. Americans understand that people might have a call of nature while they are grocery shopping. They do not send one out into the street to look for a public loo. The loos are ubiquitous and of high standard.

Back on 94. Corn, corn, soy, corn.

Signs to 22 1/2 Mile Road. More for 26 Mile Road. Puzzling names.

Past Albion, Springport, Spring Arbor, Jackson. Corn, corn, corn, soy.

Barns are starting to reappear on the agricultural landscape. And trucks on the road.

A tall watertower tells us that the town of Sylvan is in those trees over there.

Another one announces Chelsea.

And now we are in Ann Arbor.

It is love at first sight.

This is a university town and it has all the character and vitality that goes with it. Even a shop which advertises “Insomnia Cookies. Warm. Delivered Until 3am”.

Lots of striking street art.

The streets are busy with young people.

There are lots of Indian tat shops and tie-dye gear. Bookshops and antique shops and generally quaint, interesting little businesses. I forage in a couple but am rather startled at the high prices.

We lunch in a bar-cum-restaurant, scoring a lovely pavement-side table in the shade of an umbrella. Iced tea and lettuce sandwich. Yes. My lunch was jerk chicken and prawns with water chestnut, pineapple and carrot in a dark, spiced sauce with chili sambal on the side. This, one wraps in long cos lettuce leaves and, well, it is interesting and delicious.

We check out the university. It is immense. It has 45,000 students. There are salubrious mansions for masters and sedate sorority and fraternity

houses identified by big Greek letters. Street after lawned and leafy street seem to belong to the university but its star features are its handsome old stone buildings. They are grand and glorious, built in classic Gothic, Georgian and neo-Classical styles. Stained glass. Abutments, Castellation. Carvings. Proud in the tradition of the noble old universities of England. All that is missing is cobblestone streets.

They are the jewel in the crown of lovely Ann Arbor.

Back on the road. There’s scrubby forest appearing now. We pass the exit to Saline. My online nickname. I want to go in and look. Too late. Bruce has other plans.

Signs to Milan, Toledo.

Hoarding advertising "Gluten-Free Vodka, handcrafted from grapes”. What?

Landscape opening out again to reveal more cornfields. A sort of relief overcomes me. I have become so used to them. I have been looking at them for months.

We cross the Raisin River and meet the Ohio border.

The welcome sign reminds us that this is the state of John Kasich.

And we’re warned that the Ohio Turnpike is a toll road.

Signs point to Sylvania, Toledo, Dayton...

This interstate is just mess of roadworks. We swing off onto the backroads, past Perrysburg and Luckey.

Fields and wooden houses. Lots of above-ground pools and families sitting around them sunning. Horses, barns, farms. It seems a contented landscape.

Onwards we hum and the land flattens and flattens until it could be no flatter. Of course, its flatness is covered in corn. More massive agriculture in this fertile world around those vast inland seas of Great Lakes.

We wonder what Australia might have been like had there been such great freshwater lakes in its interior.

A pleasant little town called Woodville pops up with its wide main street lined with proud, big houses. Look, it has a “Speedtrap Diner” with a police car perched on the roof. Only in America.

Fields of corn and soy. An intersection. A huge Heinz factory. Hmm. Creamed corn made here?

I look at my phone and the clock has changed by an hour. We have just moved into the Eastern Time Zone.

The landscape has not changed. It’s an endless symmetry of cornfields alternated by vast fluffy carpets of soy.

There are different sorts of corn. Some is really big. It is the real elephant’s eye variety. There is also short and stocky corn and very skinny corn. There are different stages of development, of course. The mature corn is golden-topped with its tassles. Luckily for me, I still love the look of it. I have gazed at thousands of miles of it with pleasure.

We arrive quite early in Sandusky, giving us a chance to get out and about in it and maybe even get some sun at the hotel pool.

Well, forget that. The Sandusky LaQuinta’s pool is jam-packed with happy, splashy, noisy, sunbathing, ball-tossing people. We cart our luggage into our room. It is a ground floor room. The first one we have had. It has a very pleasant aspect onto a lawned suburban parkland. It is a mini suite with a nice little living and TV section featuring a corner gas fire and a rather nice painting over the hearth. Of course, we’re in a heat wave. We turn on the fire out of curiosity for a moment but appreciate the air conditioning.

It we can’t enjoy the pool, we figure we’ll hit the beach. Sandusky is on Lake Erie,

another of the Great Lakes. Its great claim to fame is that it is the roller coaster capital of the world. Cedar Point is America’s second oldest amusement park and brags the most rides, some 71, and, I dunno, the biggest, the oldest, the weirdest roller coasters. It has 17 of them and five of them over 200 ft high. It has buildings on the history register. It has, it has, it has.

Roller coasters are not my thing, so we don’t go in.

What we are after is its mile of sandy beach.

We drive to the ticket entrance and explain our quest. We are told to park somewhere indecipherable and “walk across”.

There are parking lots after parking lots and, on the skyline, all these roller coasters.

Once parked, we can’t seem to find access to the beach. There are fences and “No Trespassing” signs to the spur of land along which runs a road to lots of beachside houses.

We are puzzled. How does one get to the beach? It is right there, but behind high cyclone fences. Huh? We cross the vast, sunburned parking lot and address a young luminous-jacketed fellow with two-way radios and illuminated traffic batons.

You drive over here and round there and then down over there and then you find a park somehow and walk through and over and you should be at the beach.

Huh?

We must look like very sweet and confused old seniors because the lad pauses and then speaks softly to us.

If you are feeling brave, there is a break in the fence where some people get through. If you feel like being adventurous.

Adventure is our middle name.

We re-cross the parking expanse under the roar of the roller coasters and the squeals of their occupants and find the far, far corner of the lot adjoining the No-Trespassing private land and we find the place in which people had pushed back the fencing and made a spot where one could squeeze around the end pole of the big cyclone fence and then clamber up over a giant mound of sand and rubble which keeps the lake from view.

And here we are.

Just the two of us.

And Lake Erie. Huge, vast, immense Lake Erie. As far as the eye can see.

Oh, and some random seagulls.

What strange and guilty pleasure. The elite privately-owned beaches were on one side of us. On the other, the beach in front of the roller coasters which continue to swoop and flip and wheel with their loads of screaming passengers.

No one is on that part of the beach. It is a security area. But far, far, far beyond, we can see where the other people have found the legit beach. Zillions of them.

And here we are, alone. Illicit. I paddle in the fresh water of the lake. Once again, it is brown and pondy in the ebbing shallow. Not like the sea. I am not mad on it. The sand is gritty and it gives underfoot. The seagulls bob around looking sceptical.

The late afternoon sunshine is warm and nourishing. We take our tops off and bask in it, watching occasional speedboats crossing the lake, watching the roller coasters and wondering at the absolute madness of people who find that sort of torture enjoyable.

Finally, as dusk descends, we have had enough. We sneak back through the broken fence, grateful to the parking boy who shared his secret access.

We don’t want to miss the Democratic Convention on CNN. This is an historic time in American history and it is as compelling as it is worrying.

The big tossup is where we will get dinner. If we are going to have Bloody Marys before dinner, we don’t want to have to drive. Bruce has already driven a lot. Time out. So it is good to be in a hotel where restaurants are within walking distance.

This is so at the LaQuinta. There is a Chinese restaurant right next door. Andy’s China Restaurant. Good old Andy.

I check out the reviews. Terrible.

How bad can it be, begs Bruce. Let’s just check it out. Look, the food photos look fine. And it’s so close. Well, against my better judgement and in an act of extreme marital compassion, I agree to order a take-away of Andy’s Chinese cuisine which we can eat while watching the convention speeches.

A couple of very unfortunate-looking people are sitting in the restaurant. Not gourmet material, I think uncharitably.

An older and a younger American woman are behind the counter trying to remember the words of a song. They are very matey. A black guy and a Chinese woman are in the kitchen. I order Hainan Chicken. Bruce orders Pepper Steak.

One is dark brown gloop and rice. The other is dark brown gloop with rice.

It does’t matter how much chili sauce I tip onto it, it is dark brown gloop which tastes like dark brown gloop.

Luckily, I like rice.

We live to tell the story.

The fact that I have no sleep is no fault of Andy’s Chinese gloop. It is that of the only bad hotel bed I’ve had on this trip.

Quite unlike the other LaQuintas.

I am glad to move on in the morning and ecstatic that we’re starting the day in the Merry-go-Round Museum.

What a wonderful thing.

It is in an old round-fronted civic building the shape of which

serendipitously hints at the idea of merry-go-round.

There is just one big old merry-go-round inside. A very old and special one with some of the most esteemed animals ever to grace a carousel. One gets a ride on it in the price of the admission ticket. I am rather glad I declined the ride because when I saw the thing going round, I was aghast at how fast it went. In the olden days, merry-go-rounds went really quite fast and it was adults who rode them. They slowed down when adapted for children. I did not know this.

English merry-go-rounds go in the opposite direction to American ones!

The reason the animals have their mouths open and look so fierce or

afeared is - wait for it - because the wood carvers found that they needed to depict the animals with their ears down and not up. They broke off too often with all the gripping and grabbing on the rides if they were erect ears. So, instead of being up-ear happy, they had to take on the expressions which went with flattened ears. And some remarkable expressions ensued.

It all adds to the sideshow fear and thrill element, the exotica of the carnival.

The museum contains an extensive history of merry-go-rounds in the USA and lots of rampant animals - all sorts from ostrich to lion, from deer to prancer. There are decorative merry-go-tround screens and cupids, myriad details of the craft and tradition of these wonderful rides.

They are in danger around the world, since they are not big profit machines. But, the manager of the museum tells me, they are still being made. So all is not lost.

On that note and to the sound of the carousel organ ringing in our ears, we bid farewell to Sandusky - a very unusual and interesting town indeed.

Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo

Back on the road.

And what a road. It is a minefield of speeding cars and signs and ramps and exits. We’re finding our way out of Chicago. Easier said than done, as it turns out. We get stuck in a ghastly industrial wasteland behind, of all things, a drawbridge that won’t come down. It is just sticking up in the air like a massive metal wall. We sit, queued in the blighted landscape looking for signs of movement. The movement we see is cars in front of us doing U-turns and abandoning the wait. Bruce checks with Dr Google and we follow suit. Zig zag the ragged backblocks.

The next thing we know, we’re in Indiana.

The road is shocking. The American interstate highway infrastructure is not what it was, Bruce says.

The landscape is interesting, however.

Marshes, swampy islands, herons - the tip of Lake Michigan, says Bruce.

Now it’s powerlines and railways, heavy industry. We cross the Calumet River. More powerlines. Great latticed giants striding across the landscape.

We’re on the outskirts of Gary.

Chimneys and steel mills.

We swing off the Interstate and onto Route 12 heading for Lake Dunes.

I spot a Farmer’s Market.

Why not?

It is hellish hot when we get out of the car. 100degF and flopsydopsy humid. There’s an avenue of canopied stalls at the end of which a singer is performing some quite good albeit over-amplifed Cat Stevens songs. Some of the stalls are selling huge rockmelons and corn, some tomatoes and other veggies which we can’t buy because we don’t have a kitchen.

But some of them are cooking. And it’s lunchtime.

There are two blokes with a classic American BBQ smoker, a huge domed thing that they tow behind cars. They are serving ribs. Yes, please.

We sit at a battered trestle table and chow down messily. They are sticky with BBQ sauce, tender, utterly scrumptious. I am in some sort of cultural reverie. This is the essence of the experience. Americana heartland fare in situ.

I’ve chummed up with a woman on a bead stall. She has some nice dendritic agate, my favourite thing. I buy a strand.

As we are leaving, I see people chomping on ears of corn.

Well, you can’t drive through weeks of cornfields without getting a yen to eat corn.

Where did you get that? Over there.

After the lad has overcome his fascination with my funny accent, he starts carving corn off the cob for me. Huh? It was not what I was expecting. He can give me straight corn if I like, but this is the way they like it around here.

OK, let’s do it then.

He proceeds to pile the sliced corn into a plastic cup and then add mayonnaise, butter, powdered parmesan and two sorts of spice powder. He hands it over with a spoon and advises me to mix it up well.

Oh, mercy!

This is heaven - not on a stick.

What a wonderful, serendipitous lunch.

Onwards on the Dunes Highway - to

the dunes.

These are lake dunes, huge sandhills around Lake Michigan, Indiana. It’s a national park. We pay and wend our way in. The dunes are beautiful and dotted with interesting vegetation, little pine trees and wild flowers. They have narrow trails up and around but these are well and truly fenced off. We join a flow of people following a well-marked path to a big cement building which is the access to the beach. They are carrying everything but the kitchen sink. Huge coolers, stacks of camp chairs, blowup beasties… Another

string of people comes towards us carrying similar loads but looking tired and sunburned.

Through the building which contains showers and loos and ---

Heavens alive.

There is the lake! It goes all the way to the horizon just like the sea.

It is lapping very softly onto a narrow sandy beach upon which thousands of people are crammed with sunshades and rugs and balls and buckets and the full beach regalia. A lifeguard lolls in a dune buggy.

A man is pushing an elderly woman through the crowd in a jumbo wheeled beach wheelchair.

Parents doze in picnic chairs as children dig sandcastles. They read. They sunbathe. People loll in the water on floaties. They toss beach balls. They are at intensive play, not quite cheek to jowl but one has to pick one’s way carefully to reach the water.

I have to put my feet into the freshwater ocean. Bruce does not. He does not even get sandy.

The water is a bit of a turnoff.

I see a steel mill on the horizon. Hmm. It’s a bit surreal.

Back on the road, we pass the mill with its huge chimneys pumping out steam. And more heavy industry. And the great course of power poles which still dominate our route.

This is a country at work.

There’s a stretch of big old trees, a stately forest of spruce and spreading oak and then, towering above them, a mighty cooling tower pumping and belching steam. Another huge power plant. And also a town, it turns out. Michigan City.

We swing in to have a look. Leafy streets lined with neat houses and manicured lawns are nestled in the shadow of this white pumping giant. It dominates the town.

We find the main street which is deathly quiet on this sweltering Sunday morning. A young black guy snoozing on a city bench opens one eye as I get out of the car to look at a massive bridal shop adorned with a glory of nuptial kitsch which has attracted my attention. I avert my

gaze from the street art, some of the most dire public sculpture I’ve seen.

On Route 12 out of town we pass a massive casino hotel and the usual sequence of strip shopping which accompanies most towns. Swingbelly’s Burgers raises a smile.

Condo developments and trailer parks, hoardings saying thank-you to Veterans. Tiny little drive-in motels, one simply called “Judy’s Motel”.

There are lots of petrol stations. Petrol is only 60 cents a litre.

Suddenly we’re in New Buffalo, Michigan, where Oink’s Ice Cream is doing a roaring business. Bud and Elsie’s Service Station, too.

Cute town alert, announces Bruce.

New Buffalo might take us by surprise, but clearly all of Indiana and Michigan knows about it. Huge, crowded marinas reveal that this is a mega popular lakeside resort. The housing is self-consciously gorgeous, clapboard classics and adventurously pretty designs tiered in many lovely, bright colours. There is a zany faux New England quality to it all but, of course, its expanse of water is lake water, not sea water. Seagulls don’t care. They wheel and wail. There are flocks of ducks, too. And swarms of holidaymakers eating gigantic ice creams. Had we known about this town, we might well have stayed here. We’re charmed to bits by it.

But off we go. The corn is taller in this neck of the woods. Yep. As tall as an elephant’s thigh. Bruce says it is because it is more advanced in its growth. We’ve been watching it growing across the country as we drive.

We’ve come 4500 miles.

Corn and soy, soy and corn. Now it is all frondy.

There’s a hand-written farm-stand sign advertising “Sweet Korn”. Hmm.

We pass Three Oaks with its sky blue water tower. There’re more than three oaks. They are everywhere. It is a sedate, prosperous little town. Massive silos evidence this - as do the vast expanses of crops which ensue as

we drive east. Just vistas of corn and soy. Vista. Vast. Vast Vista.

The silos get bigger. Agricultural machinery is gigantic. The sprinkler arms which irrigate the crops stretch way out into the fields. 100 metres?

Schoolcraft is an odd name for a town. It turns out to be in honour of a celebrated ethnographer. It’s an historic town with historic buildings and an official Historic Precinct. A big cemetery hints at just how many generations must have lived there. A funeral is underway as we pass.

And here comes Kalamazoo, a town that is more famous for its name than for anything else.

It is an Indian name, of course. Named after the beautiful Kalamazoo River. They changed the name from Bronson. Good move.

Kalamazoo has a huge cemetery, too. Really, really big. It goes up hill and down dale over rolling and beautifully groomed hill slopes beside the road into town. It is leafy and lovely with the most fascinating headstones. I would love to stop but

it is hot and we are keen to hit the Radisson.

Kalamazoo is bigger than first impression suggests. It is a low, squat city which seems to crouch on the landscape.

The broad main street features our very fancypants hotel. It is huge. Palatial. Opposite is a big blocky, dark and elderly building which brandishes a large sign “The Kalamazoo Building”. And there are banks. Oh, boy. What a lot of banks. Our instant favorite is the 5th 3rd Bank. True name. How numerical. But one wonders why? If it is the fifth third, why not call it the 15th?

The Radisson has the biggest foyer in the history

of the universe. It is a vast, towering, shiny wasteland of lonely glamour. The concierge behind a wee desk by the door looks tiny. The reception desk is three divided desks set way back to one side against an illuminated designer wall. It’s a bit lonely, too. But we get a charming reception and are allocated a room on the 4th floor. Miles away on another perimeter of this shiny marble empire is the lift whence we trundle the trolly heaving with our

road trip world.

It’s a beaut room with beaut beds and bedding. Classy telly. We unpack and go out for our usual exploratory walk. It’s hot out there. We’ve been given poor instructions by the concierge and end up heading in the wrong direction to find the mall. Bruce checks Google and we retrace our sweaty steps and check out the local shops and restaurants. There are some pleasant-looking restaurants. There is some lovely historic architectural aesthetic. But it is hot and we are just not feeling it. We toddle back to our glamour hotel and secure a lovely booth it its bar restaurant where we have a beaut meal.

A few hours later, we have a beaut breakfast,

too. Oh the toils of travel. This Radisson not only serves a stunning buffet brekky but also has a chef with a capricious way with watermelons. Watermelon art, no less.

I am thrilled to find the pool unoccupied when I try for a swim in the morning. This is a health club which means outsiders belong and use the facilities. But they were not there. Just me. And what a superb pool. Seventh heaven. A good aqua session means a good day.

And it is, albeit that I break a bead bracelet and find that under the hotel room sink is not the cleanest place in the world. Standards of cleanliness have been extremely high everywhere we have stayed. That this posh place is not up to the standard of some of the less prestigious chains is a surprise. I leave the room girl a lesser tip.

Before leaving town, we take an extensive tour to get a real feel for the place. Two things stand out. Lutherans and beer. There are lots of Lutheran churches and lots of breweries. The place is made for its beer. Gonzo’s Big Dog Brewing tickles my fancy.

Then there is the emphasis on senior housing and senior health. There is a massive nephrology centre.

And an immense teaching hospital and also a veterinary teaching establishment. There is also an impressive Mental Health and Substance Abuse centre. Kalamazoo, population 70,000, seems to be a very smart town, indeed.

We skim through the suburbs. The leafy upper crust area is highly manicured, beautifully tended houses in large grounds. Some of the houses are palatial. What’s with the roman columns on wooden houses? They do jar my sense architectural integrity.

We also find our way to the less comfortable suburbs where things are very different. They are not entirely black areas.

The population seems mixed.

But the people definitely don’t maintain their properties. Paint is peeling on the houses. Things are crumbing, rotting, boarded up here and there. Businesses are bust. Little shops have security bars on their windows. People sit on porches smoking. It is humid. They are indolent and possibly indigent.

Kalamazoo is a town of extreme contrasts.

As we leave town, I see a sign: Beer and Roadside Assistance.

Together? It sets the imagination at play.

Ah, America.

Chicago is...

Chicago.

The sky is flashing and strobing the city buildings into a state of sudden white bleach. It is late at night.

The city is roaring. The drone of its dense life is like a jet flying constantly aloft. There is an odd undulating rhythm to it. We are between thunderstorms. The calm between two storms. The last one bellowed and whacked and cracked and pounded the city, hammering it in rain so hard and dense that the buildings next door simply vanished behind its thick grey veil. When the rain stopped, the people reappeared en masse, glamorous and purposeful. Where had they been?

It is Saturday night. This is a party city. This is a boozy city. Restaurants are everywhere amid the high rises. Bars and clubs abound. The streets were packed again with cars, traffic jams, impatience, horns. Chicago is a city of horn-blowers, beaten only by Kuala Lumpur in my experience. It is also a city of sirens. They honk and wail throughout the day redoubling their frenzy during storms.

This is a big, vertical city. I look around to windows and more windows. In different degrees of illumination. Lives going on within them. I can make out art on walls, TVs flickering. Down below, the traffic hurtling, the people scurrying. Long-haired girls in skin-tight thigh-high sheath dresses milling around and smoking and queuing outside the clubs. Valet parkers caring for their charges in their neatly jam-packed lots. Young men, faces illuminated by their iPhones as they lope along the streets.

This morning I wake at 4am and see the streets still busy. I would say that it is a city which never sleeps but at 8 am on a Sunday morning it has tired its mighty self out. Nothing is moving.

We’ve had six magical days here at the dear old Hampton Inn & Suites Downtown - a couple of blocks from the river and walkable to the Navy Pier, the art gallery…

I had booked a self-sufficiency suite here months ago and was thrilled to see it was spacious with three rooms on the most prominent corner of the hotel with fantastic street views. We unpack and settle in, then try to log into the WiFi. Disaster.

It simply does not work. We can get a sort of download if we stand in the corner by the door. Or if we go out into the hallway by the lift. But this is not how we want to live for six days in Chicago. We need to download papers. I need to blog. We are connectivity people. We call the desk and speak to Jeseca. She tries try to help. She connects us to AT&T. They run tests with me…time consuming and tedious tech stuff. Then they announce there is a problem and they don’t know when they can deal with it. Is there anything else they can do for me? Eh? Doh! No. Make the internet function. That is what I want. Sorry, we can’t do that today. We can’t say when…

The hotel is embarrassed. We have the best room the the place. Any room change is a downgrade. I don’t want to change rooms. I love our room. I’ve looked forward to it. We have planned things we want to cook for ourselves. We are missing culinary autonomy, our own food.

It’s getting late. Frustration is immense. Jeseca is passionately sympathetic but powerless. She gives us a voucher to go to a trendy hot dog place. We go.

It is a zany Chicago madhouse, like the Royal Show with people at windows shouting out numbers, hot dogs, burgers and pizzas being churned out by the score, mountains of chips, huge goblets of beer, donuts… Noise, movement, colour, queues. I order chili and salad. We share a beer. The food is average. The experience is fun.

The next morning I check with the desk’s Janeli to see if AT&T are coming to fix the WiFi. Surely a booster is all that is needed. The WiFi works down the straight lines of rooms. The problem is that it is not turning the corner to our corner suite.

Janeli confers with management. We go out. On our return hotel Jeneli reveals that the management has been unable to get any action from AT&T so all it can do is to offer us another room, a lesser room, of course. So we lose our magical suite and move onto the top floor at the back of the hotel to a perfectly nice small suite with a much less exciting view. We get a discount. The WiFi is fantastic.

It’s been a productive break in the trip.

It has been a time to rationalise luggage, to do washing, to swim and sun, to read and to see friends. It has been post-office time. Two boxes of our own overload to go home to Australia and a smaller one full of goodies for the grandchildren. We read and hear of the pressure under which the postal system is crumbling - and now we see it. Just two workers and a queue of people which stretches across the cavernous post office and out the door. It took about 90 minutes to get to the counter where the African-American worker is charming, competent, and utterly unruffled.

The city is teeming with tourists.

This hotel is swarming with them.

The river tour boats are jammed with them.

The city is at its best for them, in a glory of summer flowers and working overtime.

Walking to the pier we find the people-watching almost as fascinating as the skyline. Well, not quite. The Chicago skyline is stunning from every angle. Here on the pier we have tall ships and tour boats, a funfair, and a line of restaurants. We choose one and are given a rock star patio table in the shade. In this remarkable place we have unremarkable foods.

That evening we are reunited with our friends of Nashua days, Janet and Bruce Jenkins.

They lived in Massachusetts then, Bruce running the film school at Harvard and Janet editing art books for European publishers. Janet and I had met on IRC back in the day. In fact we had shared the horror of 9/11 together online. We had enjoyed a number of meals together in New England, particularly at an Afghan restaurant in Cambridge. Now Bruce is Prof of film, video and new media at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. We are able to

walk to their place on the other side of the river. It is a pleasant walk. Their condo is magnificently located and a very secure, roomy and pleasant place. Janet makes us Brazilian drinks incongruously in honour of the Olympics and we catch up on the years in a torrent of conversation.Then we walk to a nearby restaurant run by a South African sommelier. The wines selection is bedazzling. The food is very nice. The company is joyful. We talk and talk and talk. We talk our way back to their condo. We talk to the car and, as Bruce takes us on a wonderful night tour of Chicago, we talk and talk some more. We part warmly - with Bruce offering to meet us at the Art Institute gallery the next day and have us admitted as his guests.

This we do, taking our time to walk the park and watch the children sporting in the imaginative city water features. There are two brick towers from which water cascades and on which huge faces appear in gentle and passive expressions until, suddenly, a big jet of water emerges from the mouth. Children wait in a thrill of expectation beneath these faces, squealing and leaping when the water jets appear. We are enchanted and watch for some time, noting with pleasure the encompassing racial mix of the children sharing the water.

Bruce greets us on the Institute steps and escorts us through, giving us directions for the best way to see the most.

He goes back to work and we repair to the cafe for lunch which is chosen from a series of counters - sandwich, hot specials, pizza, grill… I can’t resist red cabbage and yellow squash with salmon. Bruce picks pizza. We sort out the queues and payments and make our way into the courtyard where we sit under a sunshade and watch the water fountain and the proud Gallery matrons socialising in their gladrags.

The food is divine.

And so, of course, is the gallery. Some of the great art of the world. We revel. We swoon. We sigh. We smile. We ponder. We walk through whole periods, fauves and monotonists, surrealists and landscapists - from de Chirico to Renoir and so many Picassos that one began to

yawn (not).

The gallery is busy but not too busy. We can move about and enjoy everything. We do this until our feet are aching. We stop and find another cafe and have a macchiato. Then we get going and do more.

By the time we have walked back to our hotel, our pedometers tell us we have covered 11 km and climbed 22 flights of stairs.

We treat ourselves to a date at Ruth’s Chris Steak House for dinner. This chain specialises in the best steaks in the country. It is a very rich and indulgent dinner.

I try to get in some serious pool exercises in the morning to make up for it. Bruce joins me to read in the sun for a while. The hotel has an excellent pool and a lovely adjacent sun patio in a canyon of high brick walls.

Then we go for a river walk, a city walk and a visit to Macys, which is immense. A grand department store of the classy old school which swarms with staff on the ground floor but is sparsely staffed on what seems like its hundreds of other floors. The place, which used to be Marshall Fields has a huge open atrium which is many floors high and topped by a handsome mosaic…so high up. One gets vertigo riding the escalator. Believe me.

The evening is reserved for my cherished former Tiser colleague Katie Spain and her English beau, Adam. The co-incidence of Katie and me being in Chicago at the same time absolutely needed a celebration. They meet us at the hotel and we decide to try Dirty Dick’s for dinner - because it is right on the river. We ask to be seated outside on the balcony over the river. It is hot and steamy, so much so that our appointed waiter complains bitterly about having to come out and serve us. Being rude to the patrons, it turns out, is a big part of the schtick at Dirty Dicks. While we talk and eat outside, all sorts of ghastly shenanigans are going on inside. People are all wearing big silly white hats with crude things written on them. No wonder the food is a bit on the average side. Oh well. The wine is good and the company terrific.

Friday is the big date. Val Bock, a fellow member of the Brainstorms community, has offered to host us on the famous Architecture River Tour of Chicago.

Val and I have not met before but we recognise each other instantly.

At Val’s suggestion, we take the teacher’s pet position in front of the Tour’s docent. Good thinking. It is very immediate and gives us a more intense awareness of the nuances of her focus. One has to be quick, though. This docent, one Claudia Winkler, has mountains to impart and she does so in machine-gun, rapid-fire delivery. She pauses only twice during the 90 minute tour, briefly, just to sip water, She does not seem to feel the heat.

She is absolutely engrossed in and expert in her subject. We are riveted and swivel-headed. The towering skyscrapers are magnificent, all the more so for the explanations of their whys and wherefores. They make me weep for Adelaide which has so sorely missed the boats in architectural aesthetic. It was once noted as a pretty city. Once, when it had colonial buildings and big, shady verandahs. But those who achieve control by shouting that history means “mothballs” have surrounded us with a city of brutal glass boxes. Dull, cheap, depressing. Architects, developers and town planners have de-spirited a whole community with their thuggish penny-pinching.

Everyone should come to Chicago to see how an urban jungle becomes an art work when developed as a project in integrated design. “Contextual” is the word that our docent used. New buildings are fastidiously designed to complement their neighbours, to reiterate the shapes and rules of the classics. Even the mighty Trump Tower respects these rules of context and aesthetic and is, in itself, one of the beauties of the skyline. Um…we won’t say anything about the huge “TRUMP” sign on the front. Trump is the Polites of Chicago. “Adaptive re-use” is the docent’s other catch-cry. Old warehouses are born again as apartments and condos through restoration, renovation and the addition of hanging balconies - which are one of the striking ubiquities of the city,

Val takes us for a bit of a walk after the river tour. Back to her place for a glass of iced tea. We really need it. It turns out to be a five-mile walk and the day is hot. But the route is wonderful, straight across the city all the way along Millennium Park and along Grant Park, past the mighty lines of foreshore buildings. I find a doll lying on the hot pavement. A very fresh, new doll. Some child must be bereft. The doll looks sad and lost, too. It's all a bit poignant. I put the doll where I hope she might be found. We forge forwards following Val. Val is a fit woman and does a lot of city walking.

A mile or so on, we pause momentarily to admire the scale of the lake. I ask a gentleman sitting alone and admiring the view if he would mind sharing his park bench with us. He is an elegant man and his accent is English. You’re a Brit, I tell him. And so a conversation begins which reveals that he has not only been to Adelaide but lived there as a professor of Theatre at Flinders University. John Green is his name, now chair of the School of Fine and Performing Arts aka Theatre at Columbia College, Chicago. He loves living here, even in the famously wicked winters.

Val’s condo has a spectacular view of the lake which is very busy with watercraft of all sizes. She points out a large carpark in the foreground of her view. Here, she says, Obama’s big black Marine 1 chopper lands whenever he comes to town. They close Lakeshore Drive, security is intense, and it takes all of four minutes to move the President from the chopper to his vehicle and whoosh, he is off to his Chicago home just down the way. He’s a Chicago boy, after all.

Taxied back to the hotel, we take it a bit easy on the pool patio. It is not always easy getting swims here thanks to the domination of children. I have yet to meet a parent who offers any consideration towards a grandmother trying to do exercises in a corner of the pool. Quite the opposite. They do their passive aggressive best to drive me out of the water so the kids have 100 per cent splash and dive space. My regard for American manners has nose-dived from the frequency of this phenomenon.

Strolling out in what we now feel is “our” bit of Chicago in the neighbourhood of River North, we choose a modern Mexican restaurant for dinner. We score another rock-star table for two on the sidewalk patio. A glass of interesting Spanish wine and a jicama salad. Oh, my, why don’t we have jicama in Australia? What a fresh and lovely vegetable with a lime and green mango treatment. A grilled redfish main with Mexican salsa and rice. Bruce’s haddock gets the thumbs-up, too. Healthy and divine. We swan off into the night and sabotage it all with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s.

Our last Chicago day has been one of just relishing the city. We have meandered the streets and leant on bridge rails gazing and watching with that glorious sense that the clock is not watching us. We have strolled the riverwalk and sat among the tourists and locals, listening to the live music in the riverside wine bar and watching the world go by. Studying the details of the buildings. Soaking it in. Soaking it in.

We have loved it here.

Chicago, you’re our kinda town!