October 22 I went to Chicago for an interview for ICEX.tv.

The flight was comfortable and short. The interview was also short but a bit more eventful, since it was recorded at the Millennium Park, and of course we had all kinds of interruptions (ambulances, planes, curious tourists, a photoshoot that wanted to take the place we were filming in…).

In any case, the filming came out perfect in a single take, so that left me plenty of time to visit the city.

I have been in Chicago in multiple occasions, both for business and for consular matters. But I had never had several free hours in the city like this time. So I decided to make the best out of it.

First I went to the Chicago Cultural Center, where I enjoyed the Shostakovitch Op. 40 sonata for cello and piano, performed by Caroline Paulsen and Qiyun Dai, under the biggest Tiffany dome in the world.

Right after that I went to a place I have been meaning to visit for years, and I was ashamed I had not visited yet: the Art Institute of Chicago. Unbelievably TripAdvisor users voted it the best museum in the world in 2014, when actually, thanks to a huge art donation in 2015, its only now when it could even be considered for that honor.

I love eclectic museums, like the MET, or the British Museum. The ArtIC belongs to that group, and its design, architecture, and antiquities collections are not bad. But it’s its modern and contemporary visual arts collection that really shines. Plenty of iconic works under its convoluted roofs like El Greco’s “The Assumption of the Virgin”, Seurat’s “Sunday on La Grande Jatte”, Monet “Stacks of Wheat” series, Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist”, Van Gogh’s “The Room”, the Japanese art in the Ando Gallery, Brancusi, Modigliani, Calder, Dalí, Gris, Warhol, Pollock, Murakami, Hirst, Herman… a cornucopia of art.

Before going back to the airport I stopped at Bibibop to create my own bibimbap-like dish.