When traveling around, I highly advise searching ahead for recommended places to eat (google for a type of food in that place). The two places we've gone to, Chubby's Hoagies in Philly, and Good Fortune in DC, have both been solidly good food (across an audience of at least 5). If we don't plan ahead, we tend to get fast food. And I don't want to be in some big city and get McDonald's.

We didn't reserve tickets to 'Degas and the Dance', so we didn't get to see that exhibit, but the Chicago Institute of Design photography exhibit (which we originally were going there to see) was a blast. Art Sinsabaugh's panoramas and Yasuhiro Ishimoto's child pics were intriguing. The only bad thing about the show was that a bunch of the works felt fairly contrived, but they were some of the first to do this stuff, so I can't complain (I don't think I could have done what they did, given their times).

But other than that, it was a bleak, rain-soaked day interrupted only by peals of laughter and awe. Today was the first time I understood what people mean when they've written that a sword spoke to them. In the armor section of the PMoA, there was a great sword that I had an equally great impulse to pick up, heft, and then lay waste to a bunch of armor. I'm sure any Europeans watching were thinking, "And the fate of the world is in this society's hands? sigh."