4 – May 29-June 10, 2026 – Empire Builder/Chicago/Wichita

June 1, 2026 – Chicago Loop, Chicago Art Institute

Last night, we checked into our hotel and crashed. Both of us wanted a shower rather badly, and it’s a bad day when the faucet just swings loosely and no water comes out. But the hotel engineer quickly put that to rights, and we were good to go. We ordered dinner from the Asian Fusion restraurant ‘Mei’s’, and had a nice light dinner. We are at the Best Western Grant Park, at the south end of the ‘Loop’, and pretty much across the street from the Field Museum.

The beds were comfortable, and we were both glad for beds that weren’t moving! We slept late, and didn’t really get moving until about 9am.

Last night while I was working on my blogs, I got up from my chair, planted my foot and twisted as I got up. I’ve had a bad right knee since I was 15, and a petella that tends to slide, and that movement was the kiss of death. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown it out that badly. Over the next hour my knee went out, then eventually back in. I literally couldn’t walk. It was better this morning, but not good. Thank heavens for Amazon! I placed an order for a knee brace, and it was delivered to the hotel within 1.5 hours. It made all the difference.

We had pastries from the wonderful Paris Baguette deli downstairs at the hotel, then headed out for the ‘Big Red Bus’. This is an open air double decker bus and tour that is ‘hop on hop off’. I’ve ridden this in many places and they are a great way to get a lay of the land. The tour on this one wasn’t nearly as good as some and the driver push really hard for tips, which was annoying. But the view of the city was terrific. I’ll make a separate post at some point on all the building because the architecture was awesome! The tour covered the whole of the downtown Loop. Although this wasn’t the best tour – more music than information – we found it helpful. We bought a ticket covering 3 days, as this will get us to where we want to go, and we marked out several places to visit. I’ve attached a few of the many pictures I took below.

The stop before our ‘home’ stop was the Chicago Art Institute. This was the reason I wanted to come to Chicago in the first place. The Art Institute is the home of the Thorne Rooms. The rooms were developed by Narcissa Niblack Thorne. She loved miniatures and period architecture. During the depression, she gathered some of the top architects, interior designers and craftsman, with whom she created 100 ‘period rooms’. These included mostly American and European, but there were others such as Japanease in there as well. She designed them to show actual and period architecture styles.

Originally 100 of them were completed. 99 are still believed to be in existance, with 68 of them on permanent display at the Art Institute. The remaining are scattered throughout the country. Since I love both architecture and miniatures, the Thorne Rooms have long been a bucket list item for me. Kind of like a cross country train ride was part of the bucket list. I’ve crossed two off this trip! So today I finally got to see the Throrne Rooms.

They truly lived up to the hype. Often miniatures in 1:12 scale are too heavily made for the scale. These were not. They were so finally detailed that if you saw a picture, you would think they were life size. Every detail was perfect. The flowers were what I really noticed. That and the ceilings. The craftmanship was perfect. I can’t imagine what an undertaking making these must have been. I took several pictures, and have included several at the end of this post.

The Chicago Art Institute is far more than just the Thorne Rooms, however. I had no idea. We could have spent days in there. We did see some architectural fragments of stone and wrought iron such as elevator grills in their collections as well as Tiffany Glass. Inside one of the galleries was Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. We were heading for that when we were distracted by shiney things off to our right. This turned out to be the European Decorative Arts wing. (‘Squirrel!’). The craftmanship on display was superub. Silver and porcelian and inlaid furniture.

We did make it back to see Seurat’s paintings, and other impressionist works as well. The one I was most taken with was Renior’s Two Sisters on the Terrace. The colors were just astonishing. Lee continued looking at more art while I sat down for awhile. I found lots of fascinating details in the main staircase foyer alone. And lots of ideas for future drawings!

I was very suprised by the crowds. There were lots of people at the museum, and I was surprised. I was amazed at the crowds in the Thorne Rooms as well. The whole place was really busy, but never felt over crowded. The Chicago Art Institute was a real winner, and I’d come back to the city just to spend more time there.

We finished up at the gift shop. Which was as wonderful as the Institute itself. There are a few more pictures at the end.

We grabbed the bus back down to our home stop, and as we got off, Lee realized that she had forgotten her backpack back at the Art Institute’s bag check. We crossed the street and caught a bus back up the street, retreived her pack, and then another bus back down. We got lots of practice in the transportation aspect of Michigan Street!

We had a truly marvelous meal at Kitty O’Shea’s Irish Pub. I had one of the best rib eye steaks I’ve ever had, and Lee’s beer battered fish and chips had real flavor. The pub was a great find.

Our final stop of the evening was a quick stop at Trader Joes, just around the corner from our hotel. It was interesting to see the crowd there. It was a very european type crowd. Buying just what they needed for the evening and morning, then heading out to home.

It was a great first day in Chicago. Now if I can just keep my body from falling apart, I’ll be happy!