Elgin, IL

[tielan]

So, wiliqueen lives a little way out of Chicago, and on the Saturday, we caught up. With bonus lunch appearance from havocthecat!

I hadn't really been to Elgin before - I'd stayed with lj user=wiliqueen site=livejournal.com> briefly ten years back when she was in a production of Jekyll and Hyde (we racked our brains to remember when I stayed with her because I remembered stayding with her but not why or when).

Mostly we wandered and chatted and sightsaw. It was a pretty long day, from 7am until around 7pm when she put me on the train to go back towards Chicago for pickup. :)

Breakfast was at the Blue Box Cafe - and yes, it's that blue box!


We went around through an antique market, then wandered off to look at an actual castle:


Apparently some guy wanted a castle, so he built one? It's been sold and bought several times since then, but it looks like the latest owners are doing some renovations:



Some quilting-relevant signs I saw at the antiques/craft market:


We had lunch at a restaurant with havocthecat which involved a lot of catching up - it's been at least 8 years since I got to hang out with T, so that was good, too!



It was a pretty grey day, at least to start with, but in the centre of Elgin, there was some kind of market going on. I've forgotten what the theme was, or why, but there were food and various stalls/displays, including one of gnomes:


Admittedly, slightly creepy gnomes...

Doesn't this building look like it belongs in Gotham City?


After that we went to the Elgin Museum:


Here, the elderly caretaker tried to take us (verrrrrrry slooooooowly) through the display in the first room. Considering that he started off with how this section of Illinois was brought to the attention of the people back east by soldiers who were marched through this part of the US "to pacify the Indians who'd broken their treaty with the US government" (his phrasing, not mine), let's just say that I wasn't particularly eager to listen to him drone.

Fortunately, a family of young kids came along and we ditched him and made good our swift escape out into the rest of the museum...

The museum itself is pretty fascinating - from the settler days to the industrial changes, to the wars, to post-war immigration... Lots of things about the area and how it's changed in the 150 years since it was colonially settled. It would have been interesting to see more about the native peoples of the area, but this wasn't really going to be that kind of a place, I suspect.

Random photo of a house I liked the architecture of:


And, because this is me, a mini tiramisu dessert after Chicago Deep Dish Pizza:


Catching up is going to be slow. And is today a bit tiring - my head is slightly spinney thanks to being up for entirely too long without decent sleep.

On the other hand, I have a kitty sleeping half on my lap, having foregone a cushion in full sun to snuggle. So there are downsides and there are upsides...

Comments

[everbright]

You're right about the pseudo-Gotham building. It's a very dramatic building in it's bones even though it's also very dingy right now.

Speaking of buildings, the awful yellow brick on the Elgin museum made me wince. I swear those bricks are the bane of the Chicagoland area.