Eli and I spent a week in Chicago in early November. Neither of us had been, and we didn’t have any expectations. I was attending a conference, and being able to explore the city was a happy side-effect.

The week was full of surprises: the weather was much warmer than we expected, we didn’t love deep dish pizza, and we were obsessed with the architecture boat tour. Another fun, unexpected element of the week was the warmth of truly everyone that we encountered when we were there.

I was born in Southern Illinois, but grew up in the Northeast where there is a different flavor of direct, amusing connectedness in the people that live there. The way I describe Midwesterners is that they possess a happy assumption that of course two people in the same room, or the same car, would be engaged in conversation — being strangers is irrelevant to that assumption. That implicit openness and eagerness to start a conversation is not present in most parts of the Northeast that I’ve lived in, and certainly not the Bay Area. That doesn’t mean that spontaneous conversations don’t happen — but that if they do, I’ve often been the instigator or the driver of the conversation.

I love the Midwestern openness that we experienced, and I was utterly charmed by Chicago. The downtown urban core is dense, the train system is sprawling, and the river that runs through the city is magnetic, drawing locals, tourists, restaurants, and energy towards the vibrant riverwalk. The city is also steeped in history, and home to buildings and museums that began to feel like they had their own personalities (surely thanks to our riverboat tour guide). We’ll certainly be back.

Our favorite places were: Pizza Lobo (bar-style pizza that I cannot recommend enough), The Art Institute, and the lakefront. We ran down the lakefront to the University of Chicago campus on our last morning there: the air was crispy, the leaves were gloriously gold and orange, and I could picture my mom in the ’70’s at her alma mater, rushing to an Economics class and feeling like Chicago was the center of the universe.

More photos below: