I'm going to shift back into travelogue mode, as I prefer it to boring travel guides. We had out-of-town guests this weekend, affording us an opportunity to show them a few of our favorite places.

Saturday evening was split between the State Street Festival and the opening of the Grant Park Classical Music series. The State Street Festival had both very bad and surprisingly good music. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is always reliable. Guest soprano Kathleen Battle put in a robust performance.

After breakfast at Monday's on Harrison (recommended), we hike south on Michigan, passing one of the older fire stations, to the Second Presbyterian Church. I don't think I've ever seen tourists at this church (Holy Name gets plenty), but if you only visit one church in Chicago, I think this is the one to see. The building itself is interesting, but the big attraction is the Tiffany windows inside. I've seen a lot of Tiffany glass (without excitement) but some of the windows in this church are amazing. One of my favorites is the westernmost window of the north wall -- an elegant pastoral scene that holds my eye for long dreamy gazes. A good time for viewing is after service lets out at noon (around 9:30 am can also be good).

Prairie Avenue, a few blocks east of the church, is our next destination, although I would recommend visiting it first, as the church is on the way to Chinatown. Chicago's 19^th century movers and shakers lived on this street. Unfortunately, the neighborhood collapsed in the next century and all that remains of many of these opulent homes is a plaque describing what was once there. A few of the houses have been restored, including the famous Glessner and Clarke Houses. Not too long ago, few tourists braved the trip to Prairie. Now, I've seen tour buses stopping. I think the area will improve dramatically with the completion of the Hillary Clinton Woman's Park, scheduled to open later this summer. Progress on the park seems a bit slow to me but they just put in some bushes. I've seen the plan and it looks very promising. Lots of condos going up around here -- the warehouses to the southeast were just demolished.

The walk from Prairie/Michigan to Chinatown doesn't have much to recommend. You'll go past some housing projects, so you get to see a slice of life there. The buildings on the south side of the street look like the dwellings of insect men from a bad science fiction movie. What were they thinking when they built them? A few guys drinking from bottles covered in paper bags ask for money, but I've never been hassled here. Not a place to linger though. The city has planted flowers in the Cermak median and there are a few signs of slight improvement.

As soon as you pass through the El underpass going west on Cermak, you notice a dramatic increase in the number of people actively moving about. Chicago neighborhoods can change with amazing abruptness and this is a perfect example of where a dividing line has clearly been drawn.

Chinatown is much busier on weekends than during the week. Dim sum is a Sunday tradition with many and who are we to argue with tradition? I'm still looking for the reigning dim sum king. I used to frequent Furama in the area known as New Chinatown, north near Broadway and Argyle. Furama is still there, although the neighborhood is much more Vietnamese and Thai than Cantonese. I haven't had dim sum there in awhile so I don't know if it is as good as it used to be. In Chinatown, Three Happiness is an old stand-by, but we were disappointed with our last two visits there. The word on the street is that the Phoenix is the place to go. We confirm this with our source: Frank at Ten Ren Tea (great place to get good quality tea).

Phoenix is promisingly popular, requiring an hour-long wait. I'm tempted by their downstairs Taiwanese Bubble Tea lounge, but thinking it won't live up to our Singapore experiences, we head to the outdoor mall across the street. The Chinatown mall was built in the early 90's to try to expand the commercial district. At first, it was a complete disaster -- occupancy was low and customers even scarcer. The cheesy decorations in the opening plaza consist of poorly rendered Chinese astrology animals. They must have bought these things from the cheapest Chinese bidder because they are falling apart after a mere seven years. The entire mall is badly designed, with dark, narrow walkways and upper levels that no one visits.

Despite all the negatives, the Chinatown mall is finally starting to catch on. On the eastern side, you can find a good bookstore as well as a popular Chinese medicine shop. A few of the restaurants look like they are doing a healthy business as well. Chinatown as a whole is thriving, so even a bad mall can make the best of it.

Back at Phoenix we find much to recommend. The Dim Sum is quite tasty. It avoids the most common pitfall of being too greasy. However the variety isn't great and they stick us for $12 when we order a side dish of vegetables. So, Phoenix is good but overpriced. I think if you take the time to learn what to order you could do very well here. If anyone knows of better, please let me know.

We take the El back downtown and immediately catch a free trolley bus to Garfield Park. These buses run from Thursday to Sunday and make three stops before heading to the conservatory: Omni Hotel, Cultural Center, and the Hilton Hotel. Congestion on the Ike brings our trolley off the expressway and into the hood. The neighborhood around Garfield Park, once upper class, fell far lower than Prairie. I can remember poking around these blighted blocks in the early 80's. Houses were literally caving in. Every car on the street was damaged. Some streets were completely blocked off by debris. The only people I saw moving around on the streets were obviously dealing drugs.

Things look much better now. I saw people with families on the street and many well kept homes. Garfield Park itself is far better maintained. While this neighborhood still hasn't enjoyed the boom that many others have enjoyed, it is definitely on the way up.

The Garfield Park conservatory is a treasure that is finally being discovered. For years, my suburban friends would look at me in horror when I told them of my visits there. Along with the improving neighborhood, two things have made the conservatory more accessible: the trolley of course, but more importantly, they have added a parking lot. I think I've seen more people at the conservatory this year than in the past 20 years combined. I don't mind a bit. It still is far less visited than the one at Lincoln Park and as I've stated, still better. Every time I walk into Jen Jensen's Fern Room I feel like I'm transported to a lost world. I hope they gets some extra donations to pay for a gardener who will notice that the young banana trees have scales and the Fern Room is infested with slugs.

mdonath@yahoo.com

http://www.oocities.org/mdonath