Friday was our last full day in Chicago, so we wanted to make it a good one. Sadly, Shannon and Jolene left for Maine directly from work on Friday, so Friday we’d be without them. However, we still made a good day of it.

I went running on the park path again, and then got back and showered. Mer got up shortly thereafter, and we ate our Ann Sather’s leftovers. Mer got ready while I puttered around. Once Mer was ready, we jumped in the car and headed north a fair amount to the Chicago Botanical Gardens, on the recommendation of James. We are very pleased he suggested the trip.

The gardens are free, but they do charge $20 for parking, which is certainly reasonable by Chicago standards. We wandered into the visitor center, used the bathrooms, Mer got her map and worked up a plan, and we were off. Or not – the first thing Mer wanted to do was wait 10 minutes for a tour guide. So, we did just that, and joined a group of about ten people. We were led by a woman in her 60s who seemed very knowledgeable about the gardens. She took us through some of the gardens nearest the visitor center, and I was exposed to a new kind of nerd. Mer and I have a theory that all areas of life have nerds – people who are really really “into” something. Here at the garden, I was introduced to the plant nerd: a woman next to me started talking about how such a plant was not doing well anywhere, and other such things. She was not obnoxious at all, and I was amused to find a new type of nerd.

Anyway, the tour lasted about 30 minutes, and barely scratched the topsoil of the gardens. Mer and I were pleased by the introduction, and the we headed off on our own. We climbed to the top of a hill (of course) to see a waterfall and to get a good look at the Japanese gardens. We then headed back down the hill and toured those gardens, which were beautiful. We go to see a traditional house that had been built in Japan and shipped over and that used no nails of any kind (it was all tongue and groove fittings).

We then spent a very nice four hours or so wandering the grounds. We saw all the major gardens, but did not see the outlying areas like the prairie section. There were some isolated stone walls set in circles to sit on, and lots of pretty flowers and trees and grasses. About a third or so of the gardens is made up of water, so that added much to the beauty of the place. Mer lamented that we had not known about the place when we lived in Chicago – the touch of nature, even artificial, would have been very welcome to walk through often. Live and learn – at least we got to see it on this trip.

We did have a light lunch at the gardens, and we toured the rose garden after lunch. They were pretty, but suffering from days of extremely hot weather. I’m afraid I could relate, as I had to spend some time in the bathroom during the early afternoon as the result of the heat (my body seems not to like the heat at all). We then tried to walk a woodlands trail, which we did find, but we were running out of time and the trail was very buggy. So, tired but happy, we headed back to the apartment.

Once back, we called James to arrange our get-together. After a little going back and forth and calling around to check things out, we settled on going to the Steppenwolf theater to see a new play called A Parallelogram. We had never been to the Steppenwolf before, and we were looking forward to it. But first, Mer felt as if we should eat a little pick-me-up since we were going to go out to eat after the show, and so we would not be eating until about 10:00 or later.

So, we jumped in the car and braved rush-hour traffic to go the two to three miles to The Taste of Heaven bakery. Taste of Heaven was a bakery we liked very much when we lived in Chicago, and it has since moved a few blocks, but we found it after parking the car on a side street. We went into the bakery and ordered an old favorite, thousand chocolate chip cake. It was still quite good, but I had remembered it being a richer cake. Maybe they had slightly changed the recipe in last nine years. I have to admit I was a little edgy because of time. I thought we would need a full hour to get to the theater, but Mer kept telling me it would be fine since we were going on the faster Red Line. We left the car on the side street and walked the four blocks to the El. We waited for a train, and the long and short of it is that Mer was perfectly right – we got to our stop efficiently and with spare time. Silly me.

We met up with James at the theater with no great trouble (it is only a few blocks from the Red Line). The biggest issue was that the theater was having trouble with the computer system, and could not print out our tickets. That became a bigger problem when they told us we were going to be seated standby. We had picked up excellent seats after someone had canceled (it turns out there are no bad seats in the theater, but I also wanted to make sure we could sit together). I knew the seat numbers, and after a bit of very rare insistence on my part, they let us sit in those seats.

The play Parallelogram was excellent. The play focuses on a woman who may or may not be able to see the future and may or may not be able to “rewind” her life to try to change events. She may or may not be mad. It was a dark comedy, and was quite engaging. The set was very cool, with the corners of rooms (including furniture) rotating to change the set as needed – very spiffy. My only complaint about the play was the language. The main male character swore up a storm. He rarely could get through a sentence without throwing in a little salt. I sometimes think playwrights feel as if they are being “real” when they have characters who swear all the time, but in all my years of being around numerous groups of people, including on construction sites and logging operations, I can only recall one person who actually talked like that. I do not think the play would have suffered at all if the swearing had been cut in half. I’ll get off my soapbox now. Excellent play – I recommend it to my Chicagoland readers.

After the play, we wandered about for some time to find a good restaurant. I am fairly picky, and the first couple of restaurants did not look as if I would find anything good. James took us to a nearby watering hole that he likes, but while they were open late, the kitchen had closed at 10:00 (it was 10:05). we wandered back to one of the original bars, the Black Duck, and it turns out they had a very extensive menu that included a very good burger. Don’t judge a bar by the specials board, I guess.

We got a seat outside, and the street was dimly lit and quite lovely. My food was excellent, and we were even offered free beer for some reason (which we all turned down). Still, it was a nice gesture, and may have been a promotion, but it was still friendly. I would certainly go back to the Black Duck again, as long as I could sit outside (the inside seemed more typically bar-like to me, dark and sort of cramped). It was a really great and mellow way to end the evening. We ate and talked about Mer going to Romania. We finished up near 11:00, and all three of us walked to the Red Line. We said goodbye to James, and he went to the south-bound platform. We caught our north-bound train, walked back to the car, and headed back to the apartment, getting our usual easy-access parking spot. It was not hard to fall asleep that night!