Matisse

These pictures probably give away to some of you which city we fell in love with.
As i can't keep secrets very long, i will probably say it anyway in this post.

The initial reason Alexander and i made this trip, was that he needed an MRI for his knee. This needed to be done in Edmonton. Yukon Health Care paying for us to fly down.
March 23 we fly down. As it is snowing in Whitehorse we are delayed. Everybody in the plane stays calm about maybe missing connecting flight in Vancouver, so i try to stay calm too. And beautifully, we walk out of the plane walking on to the next plane, which departs right away. Arriving in Edmonton, we still have to figure out how to get to the Hospital. There is a shuttle bus, which leaves, now. We arrive at the Hospital, check-in in the out patience residence, carry on to see where we have to do that MRI, in an hour. As it will be they have an opening right now, Alexander sleeps for the 20 minutes of the duration of the procedure. We walk a few blogs to find a restaurant, eat, back to the 'hotel', where we try to sleep for a few hours, at 4.45 am we take the first shuttle bus back to the Airport.

We had booked a ticket to Holland, as from here it is way cheaper as from Whitehorse.

We have a layover in ! Chicago. We have never been there or on that side of the continent for that matter. So my only wish was to see the Great Lakes.
Arriving in Chicago, we ask how to get down-town, beautifully the train leaves right from the Airport. And where as our shuttle bus in Edmonton cost us $50, here we pay 10 bucks for two return tickets. Chicago here we come!

Ahhhh the city is beautiful! The high rise and the big boulevard. And lake Michigan... oh well. I can say now i have seen one of the Great Lakes and i am glad i did. We eat something, catch the train back, and catch our flight to Amsterdam, where my sister is waiting.

What i wanted to say here, is that our travelling went so smooth, which totally amazes me, it's a world so far removed from my life in the woods in more than one way.

I don't know if i like travelling though. It's the line-ups, waiting for check-in and security etc. that do me in. I look at the other people in the line, and wonder how they do it, how they can stand still and shuffle along for that long. Why is nobody falling apart like i do. Some are even happy, anticipating their trip. Here i can learn to be patient. Once in the plane i am okay again. Even lounging in the waiting areas i can enjoy. It's the standing in line.

And I hope you can handle the length of this post, about...what?

So i suffice to say how we enjoyed Chicago on the way back.
It just so happened to be that Matisse had an exposition in the Art Institute of Chicago. I was thrilled about this, as a few people had recently told me that my work reminds them of Matisse. Well now, when there is any comparison, i have to go bigger. I loved it though, was surprised about the roughness of his work, the energy of it, the power, Never ever am i going to worry about perfection anymore. His perfection clearly in the totally letting go of all rules.
We didn't had much time to see much more. The building itself already totally awesome. mmmmm Chicago, i hope i'll be back one day, you're like one of my mountains that i love to climb again.

Oh and about mountains, you know how the weather can be brutal, well Chicago had a torrential rain storm the day of April 7. Under the overhang of the skyscrapers we somehow did make it to the Museum, which i didn't know exactly where it was, other than on the boulevard close to the lake.

Tomorrow; spring time in Holland.