My Travel Memories – Page 2 – To Hither and Yon

My Travel Memories: The American Museum of Natural History, New York City

We’re going to frame my trip to the American Museum of Natural History as a flashback. Our story opens with a movie called The Relic, released in 1997. The Relic was filmed, in part, in Chicago, most notably at the Field Museum of Natural History. I’ve always loved the museum, and I got my now-ex to kinda like it, too, during our relationship. So, although I’m not a big fan of horror films, we went to see it.

The Relic featured a cargo ship in Lake Michigan, kind of by the Shedd Aquarium, if memory serves (bear in mind that this was 19 years ago now and I have never felt motivated to see the movie again). I don’t think the water is deep enough for a ship that large and according to Wikipedia the ship was originally headed for Chicago from Brazil — up the Illinois River? That doesn’t even work. I mean, the Illinois doesn’t go that far, and the ship would have to have gone through the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi first. And then from the Illinois River to the Sanitary and Ship Canal which, despite the word “ship” in the name, was probably not really intended to carry cargo ships from Brazil. In real life, by the way, a cargo ship from Brazil would dock at the Illinois International Port, which is on 95th Street at the place where Lake Michigan meets the Calumet River, so it likely would have gone up the Atlantic Ocean to the St. Lawrence and then through Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron to Lake Michigan.

The crew is all dead when the ship arrives, but if they made it that far, obviously they can’t all have been dead that long. You know? If they’d died in the Illinois River, they probably wouldn’t have made it past Lockport because, well, there’s a lock in Lockport. While having Joliet menaced by a monster would be an interesting movie (Ooh! And we could have a ragtag team of prisoners from the penitentiary be the heroes! That would be fun!), that’s not the movie that they have here.

I kind of wandered off the topic there. Sorry.

Anyway, so the film uses the outside of the museum Stanley Field Hall, which, if I recall correctly, still had at least one of its old fountains that are now long gone. It was very nice for a more or less perennially homesick Chicagoan.

Then we venture farther into the museum (to sets on a sound stage, probably in California) and suddenly it stops being the Field Museum. With no warning whatsoever, the Field Museum turns into the American Museum of Natural History.

This was, as I’m sure you can understand, kind of disorienting. It also totally spoiled my suspension of disbelief. I spent the rest of the movie thinking, “But that’s the American Museum in New York.” And when I told the now-ex of this experience, he was actually kind of confused at how certain I was that it was the American Museum, so I looked it up. Yay for our first years of Internet access at home!

And sure enough, the novel that the movie was based on was set in the American Museum of Natural History. The American Museum refused to let them film inside the museum, so they shopped around for other museums. The people in charge of the Field Museum liked the script (and probably the visibility for our city in general and the museum in particular) and so they gave permission to film there.

I remember the museum as being a very nice one, though not “home,” like the Field Museum is. Now I’m wondering, though, if we got to the whole thing. Now, granted, my folks never spent much time at the “peoples of wherever” exhibits in the Field Museum, so it’s not surprising that I don’t remember it. I suspect we might not have seen it. However, there’s a planetarium in the museum as well, and that has been my folks’ idea of a good time, but I don’t remember it at all.

Megalodon jaw, AMNH, New York — Megalodon jaw, American Museum of Natural History, New York City

I do remember the prehistoric creatures areas at the museum. In fact, the only photos we took in the museum were my pictures of the Megalodon jaw (see above — I wasn’t sure which side I liked better, so I’m including them both). I’m unclear on whether the jaw on display is a new one, or if it is the original jaw being seen from a different angle. It does appear to no longer be displayed in the doorway of a room with mood lighting.

Overall, I think I’d like to return and see what, if anything, looks familiar from the intervening nearly 30 years. I would also like to make sure that I get to that planetarium.

My Travel Memories: The United Nations, New York City

Alex and my trip to New York City covered pretty much everything we did in New York City in 1988, with two exceptions. 1. the United Nations, and 2. The American Museum of Natural History. We fit a lot of things that we didn’t do in 1988 into our 2015 trip, though, and you can see them all under my 2015 Vacation category.

So, today we’ll focus on the United Nations.

At least in the United States, we tend to glorify World War II. At least in Europe, the United States was clearly on the side of the good guys. The Nazis were killing their own citizens by the millions. It’s really hard not to be on the side of the angels when your enemies are that bad.

During the war, the “Allies” as they are commonly known (the countries that were fighting against Germany, Italy, and Japan) decided that they needed to find a way to avoid wars like this in the future. They began in 1941 with the Atlantic Charter, an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom, and then about four and a half months later, 26 countries signed the Declaration of the United Nations. By the end of the war, the United Nations included 50 countries who signed the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. Of course, eventually Germany (then the nations of East Germany and West Germany), Italy, and Japan did join the United Nations.

The stated goal of the United Nations was to avoid a conflict like World War II from ever happening again. As an attempt to avoid all wars, it has been a pretty spectacular failure. The United States, in particular, has taken up arms in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, at the very least, in the years since 1945. Other countries have had their own conflicts, as well.

Has it avoided World War III? Perhaps the situation hasn’t arisen that would have ended up being World War III, but I like to think that just maybe it has. Unless, of course, future historians decide that the conflict in the Middle East that began in 2001 and involves something like 40 different countries, has been World War III, which I don’t think is an impossible development.

My own interest in the United Nations started in the 1970s, when Diana Prince (civilian alter ego of Wonder Woman) worked there. When I ended up being pretty good with foreign languages (a trait I inherited from my maternal great-grandmother, who spoke five), I thought about majoring in a foreign language and becoming a translator and perhaps I would have been good enough to get work at the United Nations. We’ll probably never know. As I told you in my previous post on our 1988 trip, I was beginning to date the man who is now my ex-husband at that point. I opted not to major in a foreign language because I knew that I was already only going to be able to see him every few weeks. I didn’t want to have to live in a foreign country for a semester (or more!) and miss seeing him for 16 or 32 weeks.

Delegates' Entrance to the United Nations, 1988 — The old Delegates’ Entrance to the United Nations. This sign, at least, was gone when we were there in 2015. I think that the delegates now enter with everyone else.

When we visited the United Nations in 1988, we walked from our midtown hotel to the UN building. We walked down 45th street, so close to Grand Central Terminal that we could practically touch it. Grand Central was on my list of places that I wanted to see in person, but we were on a schedule, so my folks and I kept walking. We made up for that in 2015.

The original hope for the United Nations was that they would find someplace unclaimed by any nation to hold their headquarters. That ended up being impracticable, so they decided on New York City as the location. John D. Rockefeller bought an 18-acre parcel of land that used to hold a slaughterhouse and donated it to the United Nations. The United States ceded the land to the United Nations, so the headquarters is no longer part of the United States, though all of the laws that apply in New York City are enforced at the United Nations. The United Nations headquarters uses the US dollar as its currency, but it has its own stamps.

When we visited, none of the various organs of the United Nations were in session. This was bad because we didn’t get to see any of the activities of the United Nations, but it was also a good thing because our tour guide was able to talk about the General Assembly and the Security Council and things in the chambers themselves, which made it more interesting.

One of the most memorable parts of the tour, though, was the disarmament room. This room has various artifacts in it, most notably coins and a statue that were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the nuclear blasts there. Our tour guide told us that the delegates had to walk through that room to get to the General Assembly chamber. I don’t know if that was true then, and I am less certain of that now that the delegates apparently have to go through security with everyone else.

Alex and I are planning a return trip to New York City as part of our 2017 trip to Canada (which I’ve already saved up for). The United Nations is going to be the top of our list of things to see if/when we do make that return trip.

Our 1988 Vacation: Why New York City?

I read a lot. I also was exposed to the usual amount of other media (movies, television, music, etc.). And about half of those movies and televisions shows (and a fair number of books) are set in New York City. As a result, they throw out names of landmarks like they’re things everyone should know. As just one example that sticks out right now, in Tootsie, Michael and George (his agent) meet for lunch at the Russian Tea Room. Well, George doesn’t know that it’s Michael he’s meeting, but that’s beside the point. But they just drop that name there — Russian Tea Room — like it’s something we should know. Other names are dropped into media, like Central Park, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building*, and Grand Central Station and I desperately wanted to actually see them. To visit them and make them real to me and not just names in a movie/television show/book/song**.

And besides that, I have always loved Chicago. When I was growing up, the only city in the country larger than Chicago was New York City. So I kind of figured that if I loved Chicago, I should love New York City, as well. And I wanted to go to see if that held true (and it really does, though I still love Chicago more).

Back in 1981 when we went to Niagara Falls, I asked my folks if we could go to New York City while we were “there.” Of course, they aren’t actually that close together; it’s still a six-hour drive. Niagara Falls is, however, a heck of a lot closer to New York City than Chicago is. My mother was actually disgusted by the idea. She had been to New York for the World’s Fair in 1964 and she said that the city was dirty and disgusting and she never wanted to go back.

George Washington Bridge, 1988 — The George Washington Bridge, on our way into New York City from New Jersey, 1988

In 1988, I started dating the man who’s now my ex-husband (and I really need him to pick a pseudonym — otherwise I’ll just start calling him Thomas (I used a random number generator to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then consulted a list of the top 100 names from the year he was born and that’s the result). We’d been dating for about six months by then and that was the longest I’d ever dated anyone. My mom was pretty sure we were in it for the long haul and so, since this might be my last family vacation with them (I actually went on one more, in 1989), she asked me where I wanted to go. There was really no competition. I asked for the one city I’d always asked for — New York City. And, finally, I got my wish.

Oh, by the way, my mom said that New York City was much nicer than she remembered and that she wished we’d planned to stay another couple of days.

* In the song “Hard-Knock Life” in Annie, they mimic Miss Hannigan saying that the floor should shine like the top of the Chrysler Building. I was 13 or so the first time I heard this and I asked my mom. She didn’t know, but obviously the audience was expected to.

**Or idiom in the case of “Grand Central Station,” which has come to mean a busy place.

My Travel Memories: The Return to Detroit and Cincinnati

The first time we visited Detroit, it seemed like a nice enough city. Of course, looking at the long term, Detroit was about halfway declined by then (Detroit had peaked in the 1950s). The decline, however, was much more obvious to us in 1987. Maybe we just visited more obviously declined neighborhoods on this trip, but we found that to be really sad.

Cincinnati was also kind of depressing as well. In 1980, my mom and I had spent the day at Union Terminal, which was, at the time, a shopping mall. When we returned in 1987, the mall was closed. We had, at that point, no idea that three years later Union Terminal would reopen as the Museum Center. We had had dinner in the rotating restaurant atop the Quality Inn which is now a Radisson in 1980. That restaurant was closed as well.

I’m hoping to redeem the memory of that trip to Cincinnati, at least, the weekend of the total eclipse in 2017. We won’t be able to see the eclipse in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which will be where the eclipse will be total for the longest period, as the trip back to San Antonio will take too much time. If all goes as planned, we’ll be going up through Memphis and Nashville to Cincinnati and then across to either Kansas or Nebraska, depending on where we can get a room at this point. Then we’ll come straight back and go back to work and (likely, though the calendar hasn’t been released yet) school the next day. And we don’t need to stay right on top of the eclipse site, since we’ll be driving. We can stay a bit out of the way and drive to the eclipse site. Having our car will also open up more possible places to see the eclipse. If the place we stay ends up being overcast that day, we can go northwest or southeast until we find a place that’s open.

My Travel Memories: The Car Ferry and Frankenmuth, Michigan

After Wisconsin, we repeated the trip that we made in 1980, this time from Detroit down into Ohio. In order to get to Detroit, we could have driven back down through Chicago or up through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and back down. Instead, we took the Badger, a car ferry that, at the time, traveled back and forth between Kewaunee, Wisconsin, and Ludington, Michigan. Nowadays, the route goes between Manitowoc and Ludington.

I’ve always had a little problem with motion sickness. It first really showed up when my folks took me deep sea fishing back in the 1970s. I was miserable. It never occurred to anyone to bring some kind of motion sickness medicine. When I got older, we went on the Wendella Boats (a future Northern Illinois Destination) and I discovered that, so long as I can get fresh air, I’ll be okay. Unfortunately, the car ferry was in 1987, long before Internet-based FAQs. I didn’t know what I was getting in for, and didn’t know if I’d have access to fresh air. As a result, I took a Dramamine before we left and spent most of the trip dozing in and out of consciousness. It was a nice convenient way to travel from one state to the other, however, even if really industrial. The Badger was originally built to carry train cars, so the Queen Mary it ain’t.

I was still a little drowsy until we got to our next stop, which was in Frankenmuth, Michigan. Frankenmuth is a nice little town full of white people, much like Door County. The difference is that where Door County was settled by Scandinavians, Frankenmuth was settled by Germans from Bavaria. And you can tell that is where they are from, because the town center has lots of kind of stereotypical looking Bavarian buildings. I suspect that Frankenmuth looks more like Bavaria than Bavaria does (and in 2019, I’ll be visiting Bavaria and will be able to put my theory to the test.

Frankenmuth was the final destination that was new to me on our 1987 trip. My next travel memory, and the final post on our 1987 trip will be a little bit about the return to cities like Detroit and Cincinnati. I should be posting that one on June 4, if I continue to keep up with my schedule.

My Travel Memories, Door County, Wisconsin

During our trip to Wisconsin, we spent a day touring Door County. If you look at a map of Wisconsin, Door County is that thumb that sticks up into Lake Michigan.

Door County is full of small towns that are, well, not so ethnically diverse. The population is largely white and largely of Scandinavian descent. It is a beautiful place, though, and is home to 11 lighthouses (all of my pictures of which are with my now-ex). We walked around in a park and my mom thought that it looked like it would be a nice place to live. I thought it might be nice for a while, but that I’d go nuts being so far from a city.

We also went to a fish boil. Watching the fish being cooked was really fascinating. They put the fish in a basket and put the basket in boiling water. Then they put some kind of fuel on the fire beneath the pot and the fire flares up. Unfortunately, the eating of the food is less exciting. It tasted okay, but it lacked a certain something. I also had the really disconcerting experience that no matter how much I ate, the amount of food didn’t seem to decrease at all. This led my primary memory of the fish boil being my mother grousing at me because I wasn’t eating. I’m glad I did it the one time, but it wasn’t the kind of experience I’d ever care to have again.

My Travel Memories: Manitowoc, Wisconsin

When I added “Wisconsin” to my tag list, for some reason WordPress wanted to turn it into Switzerland. I mean, it has some of the same letters, but the two words aren’t that similar.

I’ve actually been to Manitowoc three times. Our first trip was to visit my dad’s cousins who live in that area in 1987. I later found out that my now-ex-husband (whom I hadn’t started dating yet in 1987) had a friend who lived there. I called her on the phone when we were there the second time (which would have been around 1990). Then my now-ex and I went there sometime in the late 1990s. No, I think it might have been the early 2000s. I seem to remember that Alex was there. I think it was the year that we went up a week early for Thanksgiving and spent that extra week in Wisconsin, but don’t quote me on it.

While we were in Manitowoc the first time, we visited the Wisconsin Maritime Museum (home to the USS Cobia submarine) and stumbled across Lincoln Park Zoo and Beerntsen’s Confectionery Shop. I remember the submarine more than the museum. Apparently they’ve enlarged the museum quite a bit since 1987, so perhaps there wasn’t much to it besides the submarine back then.

Lincoln Park Zoo was, sadly, kind of depressing back in 1987. Again, photographs seem to indicate that the zoo has improved markedly in the last nearly-30 years. In 1987, the three of us were all alone and most of the animals were in chain-link-fence enclosures. At least the pictures show other people in the zoo. So that’s hopeful.

Beerntsen’s is an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. They also make chocolate candies in-house. I won’t talk much about food in this blog, but I think that ice cream is probably fairly universal (though I’m not likely to want to eat mung bean or green tea ice cream or flavors like that on a regular basis). I am, actually, a sucker for combinations of mint, marshmallow, and chocolate in sundaes. This all started at Valentino’s ice cream parlor at the Old Crown Point Courthouse in Crown Point Indiana (That reminds me — I probably should write up the courthouse sometime. Is it a travel memory or a Northern Illinois destination (despite actually being in Northwestern Indiana?)?). Anyway, they had a chocolate-and-marshmallow sundae. A few years later, the man in line in front of my family at a Baskin-Robbins ordered a sundae with mint chocolate ice cream and marshmallow topping and it was all downhill from there. Back in the 1980s, Beerntsen’s had a chocolate and marshmallow sundae, so of course I had to try it. I seem to recall that it was awesome.

And, of course, I absolutely loved Manitowoc Breakwater Light. I don’t know if you can still do so today, but back in 1987, you could walk right up to the lighthouse along the breakwater. I think we took some pretty good pictures of the lighthouse in our 2000s visit, but those pictures are still with my now-ex and so the only picture I have of the lighthouse is yellowed with age. The first time we walked out to the light, it was foggy, so the fog signal was going. I grew up in the Chicago area, but in a landlocked area, so this was my first experience with fog signals, which was pretty cool.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to get back to Manitowoc, but I certainly would like to return someday.

My Travel Memories — I Honestly Think that 1987 Comes Next

This will be kind of a short post, just to fill in the missing five years here.

I honestly thought that we went to EPCOT in 1982, but we were in Florida in July and EPCOT didn’t open until October. Though that might explain why I have a memory of Spaceship Earth, which is the big golf-ball-looking structure, still under construction. We probably went to The Magic Kingdom and saw Spaceship Earth from a distance.

I wish I could find our photo albums from these years.

Since I don’t think we went anywhere in 1983, 1984, 1985, or 1986 (though I would be thrilled to be proven wrong), I guess that next up was our family trip to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio in 1987. We returned to some of our haunts from our 1980 trip and added a few more.

I do have photographs from this trip, mostly taken by my mom, so I will be adding them as appropriate once I start making those posts in another six days or so.

You will also see the first 400 words that I had already written on EPCOT in another couple of months, once I get to 1989.

Our 1982 Florida Trip — A Little Free-Asssociation

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out whether we did anything new on our Florida trip other than visiting EPCOT at Walt Disney World.

Let’s see. My mom had talked to my cousin and my cousin had told her that my other cousin (her son) had bought all of the Dungeons and Dragons manuals and that they contained the ritual for a black mass*. My mom believed it, but I didn’t. So I remember spending a lot of time reading manuals looking for that passage. I never found it, believe it or not. My mom believed my cousin until the day she died. When a group approached her to allow them to play D&D in her library, she refused based on my cousin’s story.

I saw Poltergeist on that trip. I somehow ended up sitting between my cousin and her husband, and her husband literally sat there and laughed at me for being frightened. I was one of those kids who always thought that there was something under my bed when I was little, so Spielberg’s script and Hooper’s direction played right into those early childhood fears in a way that would have had me chewing on my fingernails, if I had had even the slightest beginning of an inkling how to chew my fingernails (I made a friend who chewed his a few years later and somehow it was totally different from what I’d imagined).

I guess the only other interesting thing about that part of the trip was my first outing without a bra (I left my strapless bra at home and my dress had spaghetti straps). Fortunately I’m not abundantly endowed, so while it was kind of awkward, it didn’t actually hurt like it would have been for some of the women I’ve been friends with.

We had car trouble on the way home and ended up unexpectedly spending the night in Tennessee. Fortunately the mechanic was able to get the part we needed and get us on the road. The night we got home, our dog was still being boarded at the vet’s office, so we dropped off our suitcases and went to see E.T.

*We aren’t Catholic.

My Travel Memories: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

All of this remembering our 1981 Canada trip has me thinking about taking a similar trip in the future. We could, in theory, at least, fly into Toronto, then take the train to Montreal and Quebec City. We could rent a car and explore some of the areas to the east of Quebec City or, if I don’t want to rent a car (I suspect I’ll have had enough of that after our Salt Lake City/Yellowstone/Dinosaur National Monument trip to last me a while), we might be able to take a side trip to either Halifax or Ottawa (but not both).

As I recall, we spent most of our time in Montreal in the Old City area. We stayed at a hotel in the suburbs and took the Metro into the city. It saved us a bundle, but wasted quite a bit of time. I think Montreal was where we went in search of beignets, but since this was in the days before everyone had access to the Internet, we never did find any.

I also bought a French-language Wonder Woman comic book compilation while I was in Montreal. I planned to learn French someday and figured that the comic book would give me some incentive. Since then, I have made two attempts at learning French and was interrupted by tragedy both times (I think it was cancer the first time and my divorce the second). So I gave up. I will still learn it someday, but not until I’ve become close to proficient in all of the other languages, and I do mean all of them — Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Lithuanian, Igbo, Korean, Vietnamese . . . .

While looking for pictures of the frescoes and wood in Notre Dame referenced in Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, I found some surprisingly lovely pictures of Notre Dame that showed it full of color and gorgeous carved wood. Score one for Brown, I guess. This surprised the heck out of me. Then I noticed the caption — Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal. So if you want to visit the version of Notre Dame that exists in Brown’s imagination, you’ll have to go to Montreal to do so.

Since we didn’t do anything in Toronto, I guess that next we’re on to our 1982 trip to Florida. If I recall correctly, it was more days of hanging around the house (I seem to recall doing a lot of reading and we saw Poltergeist). We also went to EPCOT during that trip, so that’s probably what I will focus on next.

I wish I could find pictures of our 1981 and 1982 trips. I also wish I could remember where, if anywhere, we went in 1983 through 1986.