I've got a lot of 'splaining to do

Or at least a lot of catching up. 

Today is Wednesday and we are in Kansas City. Last day we posted about our trip was Sunday. So buckle your seat belts. 

Our first stop on Sunday was to Graceland Cemetery. As Benjamin Franklin said: "Show me your cemeteries and I will tell you what kind of people you have."

Graceland is the resting place of the well to do of the time - it has jewish, catholic, and black people among its members. Seems like the main priority to get in was to be well-off, which is definitely reflected in the monuments. 


Aida much?

Legend has it if you rub ... oh never mind. 


There we some amazing mausoleums (some of Chicago's golden age architects are buried there) and some fantastic fall color.











The people that work there were also very nice. They had the office opened up for a Chicago Architecture Foundation tour (they are having open house tours this weekend) and the guy noticed that Frankie was looking at the leaves. He went inside and fetched the pamphlets they had on the plants in the cemetery. 

The plan after Graceland cemetery was to go to  the Leather Archives and Museum, which was an interesting place documenting the use of recreational leather. However, they were having a leather con that day, and there was an intimidating number of chaps. Plus the fact that Frankie looks about 15 and doesn't have identification to say otherwise, led us to look at the local store. We found not only what we needed, but this fantastic array of specialty Bulgarian sausage. And if it's one thing I love about travel, it's wandering into local markets and finding what people like to eat. Kamchia and Soujouk, anyone? 

 We were both hungry so we decided to go to Andersonville for brunch and a good poke around. 
Fried chicken sandwich. With a pickle!

Wooly Mammoth Antiques and Oddities is always worth a gander.

Andersonville is one of those great neighborhoods where you can spent hours with used books, second had shops, vintage clothing, and the ubiquitous hipster brunch. 
After that we hit the Intuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.

 Most of the work was based on the collection of Henry Darger, a Chicago Native and janitor who wrote a 15,000 page fantasy novel, The Realms of the Unreal, along with several hundred illustrations. 

There were also some fantastic sculptures done by a prisoner, Mark Francis, out of toilet paper and whatever he could find as a binding agent, like pasta. 

seriously, toilet paper?

After that we went to Myopic books, a Chicago used book heaven, then pizza at Gullivers, one of the many "home of the original deep dish."

 The pizza was ok, but the interior was straight out of the 70's. Even the music. It was like stepping back in time to when a pizza place was fancy if it had checkered cloths, grapes hanging from the ceiling, and candles in chianti bottles. 
Isn't it fabulous!
After that we went home and crashed, ready for Monday.

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