We’ve successfully made it to St. Louis so rounding out the rest of the Chicago trip with a mini trip report:
Day 2 we did the Field Museum, which is awesome (SUE!) and Millenium Park. The Bean is pretty cool and provided some solid people watching opportunities, including a pro-Ukraine demonstration with a hundred or so people. Got deep dish at Giordano’s, which was my gf’s friend’s favorite place. Not mind-blowing but definitely good. Then SkyDeck at night which was an amazing view but felt way too rushed, like we couldn’t even appreciate the view.
Day 3 we continued nerding out with the aquarium and planetarium. The aquarium was fine, not as good as others I’ve been too. The planetarium was also fine, I’ve been to a bunch of planetarium shows so it wasn’t anything special. We checked out the Game Room afterwards, where I could have / should have won a Stein holding competition but decided to bow out in second place. Dinner was at a shithole bar because we wanted to watch MNF. Post-game was at Three Dots And A Dash which was pretty cool, speakeasy meets tiki bar. I got drunk.
Day 4 was Cubs game. We went to Cloudbar, the cocktail spot at 360 Chicago. Better than SkyDeck imo even if it’s a bit closer to the ground. Got mediocre food at a mediocre Italian restaurant. Then wandered Wrigleyville for a few hours, trying Murphys, Bernie’s, and Sluggers. All were cool, though Slugger’s won us over. I attempted fast pitch baseball in their batting cages despite not playing baseball for 15 years. Made solid contact… with a foul ball into my left shin. Still fucking hurts. Wrigley was awesome and truly felt tiny, obviously a must-do for anyone moderately interested in baseball. We went to Slugger’s again after the game to dance and drink and ended the night with a trip to the Taco Bell Cantina around the corner, not our best decision.
Train to St. Louis today was painfully slow at times, total trip time 5 hours. Still way cheaper than flying.
First impressions of St. Louis are meh, we’re downtown and it’s pretty fucking dead. We’ll update in a few days.
It has been a long time since I’ve lived in St. Louis, but the University City Loop and the Central West End are two neighborhoods with life to them. Blueberry Hill on the Loop is worth lunch at least.
I spend a fair amount of time in STL. Yeah it’s pretty meh outside of going to a baseball game. As for food, None of the nicer restaurants hold a candle to Chicago, but there are some local specialties that are pretty decent. I’d recommend Beast for BBQ, especially if you get the pork steak or snoots, which are St Louis specialties. I also like going to the Hill for Italian food, even though it’s nothing like real Italian. Toasted ravioli is good but a bit silly.
I think for all inclusive resorts feeling less horrible Cancun is probably a decent choice. I’ve never stayed at an AI resort but in general people in Cancun don’t resent the tourism industry because it’s a point of pride for the city, and a ton of the tourists themselves in Cancun are Mexicans.
But, more generally, yes, screw AI resorts. For the DR, go to Las Terrenas instead—a beach town that caters mainly to European tourists where locals are friendly and everyone rubs shoulders in the local bars. I’m a big fan of beach towns, but resorts just feel boring and isolating to me, and AI resorts must be even worse because the assumption is that you’ll never leave.
I haven’t paid to stay at an all inclusive resort since spring break in college. Although I did have a girl I met sneak me into her dive resort in Cozumel last year for almost the whole week and literally no one ever questioned me about not having a wristband, and it was great, so I have since softened my stance on all inclusive resorts that I’m not paying for. That same resort also had about half of it burned down this year from a grease fire, heh.
My friend got married at a DR AI resort. I was fine with it. The people were friendly. The pina coladas were strong if you tipped. And you could sneak off the resort to buy other things. The food was meh.
But he was really disappointed. I guess he expected something really special. Then again he’s one of those guys who seems to be disappointed in his meal/vacation/hike/etc a majority of the time. One reason I don’t hang out with him as much anymore.
Can someone tell me how the Uffizi is rated #1 and #5 in the world in 2 rankings I’ve seen of best museums in the world? How could someone visit that and the Louvre and possibly rate the former higher? A top 25 museum, yah I could maybe buy that, but I can’t see how it’s possibly top 10. Obviously it has a couple really big highlights, but lacks variety nor is it a particularly beautiful or well organized building.
The case against the Louvre is obvious: it’s way, way too big, and it lacks focus. It’s got stuff from so many parts of the world and from so many times that it’s basically a jumble if you go through unguided. Contrast it with Musee d’Orsay, which tells a very specific and coherent story with the art it displays: it walks you through the Realists as essentially the culmination of artists making true-to-life paintings, to the Impressionists who responded to that with something totally different (and who are super-hyped and largely the reason why you’d go to that museum in the first place), to some examples of how art continued to evolve in their wake. I don’t think every good museum has to be quite that focused, but it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of the works, or to want to take the time to study some things that leap out as having personal interest, when you’re bombarded with so much.
Another example of a museum with way too much is the national museum in Athens. It’s got some absolutely killer pieces, like the so-called Mask of Agamemnon, and the bronze statue of Zeus, among others, but it’s also got a bunch of rooms with nothing but gravestones, none of which are that much more interesting than any other, and another series of rooms with rusted ancient tools, which may each be interesting to an archaeologist, but it’s just a blur to someone who wants to spend a few hours browsing. I enjoyed the museum in Olympia more: it was much smaller, and every room had at least one thing that was distinct and striking.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the Louvre is incredible, and a random work chosen out of just about any single room would be a centerpiece in the vast majority of the world’s museums. I just think that with a little more focus and a little more commitment to telling a story as you go through the museum, you can elicit a stronger emotional response from the people viewing it that connects them to the works more. That said, the Uffizi didn’t strike me as a museum that was as tightly curated and story-oriented as some others I’ve been to, so it does seem a bit odd to put it above the Louvre.
I wouldn’t have it #1 or #5, but it might make my top ten just for being so iconic. It’s a pretty great Renaissance building full of some of the best Renaissance paintings in the absolute epicenter of the Renaissance.
Interesting perspective. I never thought of the Louvre being too big as a negative, but now that you mention it, I can definitely see the merit in that line of thought. I like the sheer variety of items, but it can also seem like a massive jumble of too many different things.
I love Orsay and the Louvre, but for different reasons, as you aptly pointed out.
One other thing that could maybe be considered is that the Louvre costs 18$, which is insane value. Also included in that is their awesome audio guides, with GPS and Nintendo DS for info/navigation. Uffizi cost me 24$ (not incl audioguide) and we were in Napoli with only an hour left to kill and were gonna hop into there highly touted Archaeological Museum, but at 18$? Nah, I’ll pass.
It’s almost impossible for me to believe that anyone could rate the Uffizi ahead of the Louvre and not be trolling. Everyone in our group concluded (only half-jokingly) that that writer had to have been paid off to put Uffizi #1.
We were only there for a day and a half but 3 out of 4 in our group really liked it.
Seems like an extremely livable city with interesting, colorful architecture, walkable streets (even bike lanes on many which is rare for Italy), and beautiful porticos. My favorite meal by far was some tortellini we got there. I get the sense that the food would be incredible as it’s the home of so many pastas and it doesn’t get the tourist traffic that allows places to serve the crap we mostly ate in Rome, Florence, and Venice.
Italy is packed with great places to see as a tourist so maybe it’s not at the top of the list for a quick visit, but I think it’d be at the top of my list as a city to settle down in if you’re looking for mid-sized (around 1 million people).
