Spring Break

Rachel, Robert, Audrey and I just got back from a fabulous week-long road trip.  Rachel picked two colleges to visit during her spring break - Purdue, which is in West Lafayette, IN, and Macalester, which is in St. Paul, MN.  We traveled up through Illinois to Indiana, where we visited Purdue, spent two days in Chicago, then traveled through Wisconsin to Minnesota, where we visited Macalester, and then back through Iowa and Missouri to home.  Whew.  The trip was broken up into chunks so we didn't drive more than 6 hours at a time.

After this trip, the order of Rachel's list of colleges has changed and she may be leaning towards a smaller college.  She's going to investigate a little bit more so we may have another place or two to visit (in addition to Hendrix in AR).  Though it's a large school, KU still reigns supreme, so this summer will be very interesting as she makes her final selections.

In addition to visiting schools, we spent a lot of time exploring, eating, visiting libraries and listening to podcasts.  It was a very relaxing, meandering kind of trip. 

My top five favorite eats were:

5. La Michoacana Ice Cream and Fruits in Downer's Grove, IL.  I had the gansito ice cream, which is basically ice cream with chopped up pieces of the chocolate-covered, strawberry-filled Mexican snack cake, which I hadn't heard of before this experience.
4. A Baker's Wife in Minneapolis, MN.  They had some of the best donuts I've ever had.  Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.  The strawberry (minus the icing) was my favorite.
3. Moscow on the Hill in St. Paul, MN. Rachel picked this place and while everyone happily ate cow tongue (which they raved about), I chose to tuck into their borscht, which is my new favorite borscht. It was chunkier than other borscht soups I've had and included sour cream. Delicious!
2. Hero in Chicago, IL.  This was the best coffee I drank on the trip, and one of the best cups of coffee I've had in some time. It was even better than my local KC fave - Messenger.
1. Sultan Kebab & Bakery in Norridge, IL. Our lunch was great, but it was their Harissa cake (a coconut yogurt semolina cake) that stole my heart. It reminded me of suji halwa (another semolina dessert), which is one of my favorite desserts, but it was different because it was cake-like.  I plan on making it at home as soon as I have some extra time. It was so amazing I would definitely say it's in my top ten all-time favorite desserts.

These are my favorite pictures from the trip. Enjoy!

This was a mural on the outskirts of Purdue's campus.  Rachel affectionately calls it 'the banana storm.'  I love it so much I might just blow it up and hang it somewhere in our house.

Though we didn't buy anything, we found an amazing bookstore in West Lafayette, IN called Von's Book Shop, which had both new and used books.  I was incredibly impressed by their poetry collection, which is one of the most fleshed-out collections I've seen.  There was also a part of the store we couldn't even see due to a low ceiling, which was pretty interesting.

Rachel and Robert had a thrilling time visiting the Willis Tower (while I was safe on the ground exploring the Harold Washington library).

Rachel and I spent way too much time at The Art Institute of Chicago, which was way too big to see in one day, let alone a few hours.  Rachel was very patient with me while I looked at every single Thorne room (the exhibit was everything I hoped it to be and so much more). 

Rachel's favorite thing in Chicago was the Bean, and though it was snowing, windy, and freezing, she spent a long time with it, mostly petting it and making funny faces at it. 

I checked out three libraries on the trip - the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, IL, The Dole branch of the Oak Park library system in Oak Park, IL, and the Roosevelt branch of the Hennepin system in Minneapolis, MN.  I learned a little bit from each branch and enjoyed exploring them.   The Dole branch was by far my favorite.  Though it was small, it housed a mighty multicultural collection - each of those boxes is filled with items relating to different cultures and available for checkout.  

Like me, Rachel gravitated towards the children's areas in each library and made herself at home.  She even found a friend at the Dole library.

We took a whopping five jumping pictures on this trip - Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Missouri (we were a little surprised we didn't have this one).  Wisconsin was our best jump.

I also have to sneak this one in too, which was the best non-jumping state picture (yes we spend a lot of time at rest stops).  

I was very sad we didn't get to hike during this trip. The weather just wouldn't cooperate.  We did walk around Minnehaha Falls and enjoyed the waterfall, which was even more glorious due to the weather.  

Oh, and where was our poor abandoned dog during this trip?

Don't judge us just yet!

She was taking a leisurely vacation herself at Hunter's house (Hunter is a close friend).  We received this picture during the trip and rolled our eyes a bit.  She had a great time, received far more attention than the piddly amount we give her, drank all the kitty water she wanted, and basked in the hatred of Hunter's two cats. One of Hunter's cats even tried to kill Ella by pushing her container of pills onto the floor (two weeks worth), but because they were only pain and glucosamine pills, the only side effect was that Ella was high as a kite for a day.  Much to the cat's disdain, Ella probably loved her even more after that.

It was an awesome spring break!