On The Road Again

    Bright and early last Thursday morning Tom and I grabbed our bags and walked up the block

to the COTA bus stop,

...from where we took the COTA bus to downtown Columbus

    ...to the Megabus stop,

...where, as luck would have it, Dwayne, our favorite Megabus driver, a really friendly and helpful guy, was driving the bus to Chicago,

    ...where we were headed to visit Claire,

    and Miguel,

...and their two kitties, Kubo and Sassy,

    ...whom we hadn't seen since Claire returned from Sierra Leone (see post from 1/14/2015).
    The most interesting episode of the trip actually occurred during the first leg while we were riding the COTA bus to downtown, when an outdoorsy-looking girl who appeared to be in her mid-20's stepped onto the bus balancing in her hands a large shallow rectangular box, like the lid of a banker's box.  She sat down across the aisle from me and when I leaned over a bit to take a peek at what was in the box I gasped and and jumped back involuntarily at what I saw.  The box was full of squirmy, squiggly,
    "Silkworms,"  the girl said with a smile in response to my reaction.
    She explained that she had just picked up the worms and was planning to raise them and then spin the silk that they produced.
    "Oh, wow, good luck,"  I said as she got up to exit the bus with her worms.
    "Oh, well," she giggled,  "if it doesn't work I'll just feed them to my praying mantis."
    To each their own, right?

    After our Megabus arrived in downtown Chicago we took the subway

to Bucktown, where Claire and Miguel live

in a cute, spacious apartment overlooking the city:

...with a staircase that always reminds me of the  staircase to my grandmother's much tinier apartment (see posts from 3/21/2014 - 3/27/2014) that, when I was a child, looked high and steep as a mountain.

    By the time we  arrived at Claire and Miguel's place it was dinner time.  Miguel had to work late so Claire, Tom and I walked to Wicker Park, the next neighborhood  south of Bucktown,  to an Italian restaurant called

the Pasta Bowl,

    ...where the salads were to die for:

    Claire had the Caprese made with fresh mozzarella over basil leaves,

    Tom had the house salad with white beans, olives and tomatoes,

...while I had the spinach salad with bits of pancetta and the creamiest, most delicious goat cheese I've ever had.

    Next we each ordered a different pasta, none of which any of us thought was anything to blog home about.  In all fairness, though, I happen to be able to whip up several different really good pasta sauces myself as can Miguel, so it was just that none of us found the restaurant's pastas as good as what we could have gotten at home.  The salads were magnificent, though.
    After dinner, as we all were hankering some dessert, we strolled through the rain 

 over to Stan's Donuts,

a popular Wicker Park donutery.

    Then  we headed back to Bucktown feeling stuffed as a Stan's donut.  Thank goodness for the 1/2-mile walk home.