What I did on my Summer Vacation

Summer 2024 was mostly uneventful, as Jessica and I prepared for some fun Fall trips, but on this the last day of Summer 2024, I wanted to post about a couple of fun weekends from this past summer.

We spent the 4th of July visiting our (respective) cousins in Denver; first staying with Jesse’s cousin Hannah and her boyfriend Brett for a couple days, enjoying the natural beauty of a day spent relaxing on a river;

We took a visit to the super fun and strange Meow Wolf Denver, which is an interactive, surrealist art museum with lots of fun stuff to touch, look at, and crawl through.

Then we attended a Rockies game with fireworks after, fittingly facing the Kansas City Royals (where Hannah is from!).

The remaining days we spent with my cousin Joanna and her husband Nick, who live in a nearby suburb. We ate great food, relaxed, watched movies and took a hike near their home.

We had a great time in Denver visiting with our families and feel so lucky that we had such wonderful hosts!

Later in July Jesse and I had planned a weekend trip to Chicago to see a favorite band of ours from the 2000s, Vampire Weekend. When we landed in Chicago on Friday afternoon, we learned that another favorite rock-n-roller of ours, Courtney Barnett, was playing in Skokie. We bought tickets while on the tarmac waiting to de-board the plane, and were on our way to the concert. They had food and drinks in a very relaxed, family-friendly atmosphere.

We ended the night splitting nachos and playing skeeball and pop-a-shot at a nearby video game arcade. The next day we spent the morning at the beachfront, dipping our feet in the reasonably cold Lake Michigan water, before taking the train down to the city. We were greeted by the Sears Tower (it will always be the Sears Tower to me) when we exited the train station.

The concert was on Northerly Island, which used to be Meigs Field, where they landed small planes in downtown Chicago. Now its an ideally-situated concert venue, with the Planetarium and lake front a perfect entrance.

On this night we were lucky to have the perfect summertime Chicago evening (which only happens a few days each summer, as usually it is super-humid) to watch a band we really like.

It was a great show and after we headed into the city with thousands of other concert goers, and were provided with stunning views of the city at night as we walked along the lakefront, back towards Union Station, and eventually, back home.

In August Jesse visited her family in Missouri and I flew to see my friend Jason and his girlfriend Marcela for a quick weekend in Boston. I had not visited Boston since I was 18-years-old, and didn’t remember too much about it. We had a great time, visiting lounges and bars, eating tasty food, and walking around the city (even finding a hidden speakeasy). Below are pics from walking around in the morning.

Later we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, who collected art from around the world (leading to her world-class art collection) and built a home for her treasures in Boston around 1900. The four-story building itself is very cool, and the interior courtyard is the highlight, with Renaissance and Arabic influences.

There were paintings from Rembrandt, Raphael, Botticelli, among many other masters; there are no labels on any art pieces (as had always been the case per Mrs. Gardner’s direction), so grab a guide when there. Here are some of my favorites:

It was a really fun trip and I cannot wait to visit again, this time with Jessica!