For several years I celebrated Christmas very far from home.  Sometimes I was alone and sometimes I was with wonderful new friends. From a fabulous oyster lunch in Sydney, to a gastropub dinner in London pulling ‘crackers’, to a free Natalie Cole Christmas concert in Milan, it was always different and always more than I ever expected.  It was a little strange not being home for so long, but honestly, in many ways, it was more exciting and touching not to be.

Wherever you are home or abroad, with family or new friends…have a Merry Christmas from LL World Tour.

I’m writing this on what has been dubbed “Black Friday” in the United States. A big shopping push made by retailers all around offering big “Day after Thanksgiving” sales to lure anxious consumers into their stores to start their Christmas shopping.

After being unpacked now for six months, surrounded by all my belongings, I feel the need to take stock in how this feels.  Although, I am a purger and love getting rid of stuff and like to keep my life as simple as possible, there are still just some ‘things’ that come along with apartment living: i.e. kitchen utensils, sheets and towels, and bigger items like furniture.   I do like my bed and my couch and I enjoy cooking and having the pots and pans that I use.  But I was surprised by some of the extra items I had unpacked—like spare bottles of shampoo and lotion–I probably bought them because they were on sale.  There is this habit of stocking up or buying in bulk that I have kicked now—for two reasons: 1.  I simply don’t want to have extra items around me mostly because I want to be more mobile and want to be able to travel easily. And,  2.  I no longer have a car, so simply buying big, bulky items or multiples is thankfully no longer a real option for me. It’s not too fun dragging a super-size box of laundry detergent or a 20-roll package of toilet paper on my bike or on the bus or train, so I do just fine with my four-roll store brand package. It’s two-ply and everything.

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It’s autumn in the USA right now and it’s  one of my favorite seasons.  I actually like something about every season and most of all I like living in places where I can experience the changes that each season brings.   I grew up in New Jersey and now live in Chicago where I’ve gotten to enjoy the flowers of spring, the hot days of running through the sprinkler in summer, the crisp fall nights with the smell of wood-burning fireplaces in the air, and the gorgeous white-blanketed tree limbs after a winter’s day of new-fallen snow.

Last year I went on a road trip up to beautiful New England, visiting Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.  It’s an area of the United States full of charming colonial towns nestled in wooded valleys where simple white church steeples poke out of an array of golden yellow and blazing red maples in the fall.  America is beautiful and this is one of the most charming and visually stunning areas to check out.

The Kancamagus Scenic Byway
White Mountains, New Hampshire, USA

This is probably not the first image that came to your mind when seeing this post’s title. But there it is — a blazing sunset over the Hudson River taken from the New Jersey side looking east toward New York.  Yes, just north of the city, is a gorgeous green state that goes for hundreds of miles all the way up to the border with Canada.

What’s special about this photo is that I snapped it when I was in high school.  That’s right, this was before digital, before Photoshop, and before sex (well, for me).   Got your attention?   ‘My first SLR’, my high school sweetheart and I were wandering around the New Jersey coast and lo and behold, the sky was really that ‘on fire’.  But what I always liked the most about this shot was the little tug boat and its tiny lights.

Red Dusk

New York 1990

Yes, Virginia there is a Chicago River.  Perhaps Chicago is most known for its vast Lake Michigan or for its towering Sears (Willis) Tower or its old, ivy-covered Wrigley Field. But lest we forget this amazing thoroughfare that serpentines right through the heart of the city. It carries commuters on water taxis. It’s crossed by 38 bridges. For forty years, it has been dyed a bright green every St Patrick’s Day. And its direction was magically reversed away from Lake Michigan in an engineering feat back in 1900 to help improve sanitary conditions of Chicago’s drinking water.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging public interest in architecture and design. CAF gives hundreds of tours (by boat, bus, bike, Segway, or on foot) exhibitions, lectures, and special events all around this city very famous for its skyline and architecture. From Daniel Burnham to Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry, Chicago has been progressive and innovative since it was burned to the ground back in 1871, creating that blank slate and canvas for something well-planned and truly amazing.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to be invited by the CAF to take their wonderful and informative Chicago River Cruise aboard Chicago’s First Lady.   I had taken the river cruise years earlier and had frequently recommended it to others. It’s fun to be on the river and also cool to learn more about the buildings that surround us everyday.

Expert volunteer tour guides—called docents—interpret more than 50 buildings along the Chicago River, revealing how the city grew from a small back-country outpost into one of the world’s most important crossroads in less than 100 years.

For more info or to sign up for the CAF River Cruise, click here.