Tracy and I took the train into Chicago last week to see the current exhibition, "Van Gogh's Bedrooms," at The Art Institute. Van Gogh painted three variations of his bedroom in his yellow house in Arles, and this may be the first time they've been hung together. It's certainly the first time a museum has created a exhibition focusing on them, and it was fascinating. I learned a lot about his life from the exhibition as well as enjoying the paintings. I was surprised that taking photographs was allowed. The first photo in the collage is the first known self-portrait Van Gogh painted. The second one is actually a digital projection of the three bedroom paintings which zoom in and out showing the differences between the three paintings.
After a delicious lunch at The Gage, we strolled up Michigan Avenue. I loved the yellow sight-seeing boat that was taking off down the river as we walked across the bridge. A friend told us about Eataly, so we stopped to check it out. It's a wonderland of Italian eateries and food shops. I took quite a few photos, but my favorite was this display of cookbooks. I wished we weren't so full from lunch, because the gelato looked delicious. Michigan Avenue is lined with exclusive shops and department stores, but we didn't do any shopping. We walked almost to the end of the avenue, and although we were just short of getting our 10,000 steps for the day, decided to take the bus back to the train station. In less than half an hour, we were back in Evanston. Now that we know how easy it is to get in and out of the city, we'll be planning more excursions when we come to visit Sarah and Adam.
