Menorca

 Here I am on the small Spanish island of Menorca in the Mediterranean.  I am here with my daughter for some R and R. We are staying in a very quiet hotel with excellent food and superb staff. 

This is the view from our balcony. Only here for a few nights so I am making the most of doing nothing. We are fortunate that the very high temperatures and wildfires have not affected this island. I hope temperatures in other parts of Europe cool down soon. Will comment on your blogs when I return to normal life.

Goodbye to Chicago

 After packing and checking out of the hotel. I left my luggage there and walked with M,  to the station to say a sad goodbye. We both realise that meeting up in a different country each year as we used to pre Covid days is not really feasible but hopefully we might both have one or two more long haul flights in us. So it was with a tear in my eye but a smile on my face as I waved goodbye listening to M singing at the top of her voice 'We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when......' as she disappeared down the escalator. 

My flight was an evening one so I had all day to wander and revisit various parts of Chicago.  The skyscrapers were covered in low cloud.

Lake Michigan

Frank Gehry concert arena. We missed out here as we hadn't realised it was Blues week with lots of free concerts! No idea how our radar missed that one.

 Lunch by the river.

Then it was back to the hotel to collect my luggage and off to the airport. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Chicago and St Louis. There was a lot to see and I was glad we spent over a week in the city. 

Where will my next adventure take me? Well next month it's a few days in Menorca, a small island off the coast of Spain and then later in the year I will be visiting Albania.

Day 9 Oak Park, Chicago

 This was our last full day together in Chicago. Fortunately we awoke to blue skies as today we had arranged to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's studio and home. We picked up the Green Line to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago where there are more of Lloyd Wright's prairie style home buildings than anywhere else in the world. This was our first venture into the suburbs of Chicago and we wished we had seen a little more. 

There were numerous places to eat and we decided we would visit a Greek restaurant once we had completed our tour.

It was a really interesting tour. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)  was an architect well ahead of his time.

Everything was designed by him, including these plant holders.

We walked round to the front entrance of his home where the tour began. More than a third of his work was produced here at Oak Park. He moved here in 1889. We had an informative tour guide taking us round but as usual I can't remember much of what he told us!

I do recall that the master bedroom had an en suite bathroom though.

He made the most of windows bringing as much light as possible into the room. Furniture was comfortable and there was a lot of storage space so rooms were not cluttered in any way.

The Dining room

A photo of one of his wives and their children. He was married three times and had a total of eight children.

This was the children's' playroom

Window in the ceiling of the playroom.

This is where his students worked.

A gallery above the work spaces with windows below the ceiling.

His office where he met the clients.

After the tour we walked through the neighbourhood looking at some of the houses he designed. 

In 1905 the Unity Church of Oak Park was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The congregation commissioned Lloyd Wright to design a new building for them. He built an all concrete building cast at the site.

The building has been in continuous use since 1908 and is now a World Heritage Unesco site. It has been used, as he intended, as a church, for community events and  concerts because of its superb acoustics.

We spent most of the day in Oak Park but returned to downtown Chicago to go for a final meal in the Dearborn restaurant which had been recommended. I had the catch of the day which was hake with asparagus and morel mushrooms. This was followed by salted caramel ice cream with brownies. A very large cocktail completed our last night in Chicago.