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Day 17-18 – 48 hours in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of my favourite cities in the US, but also one I have visited many times in the past. This is why my stopover here is a very quick one so that I have more time to spend in new cities like Portland and Vancouver before it’s time to head home in just 10 days (time flies 🙂 ).

My 2 days in San Francisco are however packed, and I am happy to get to spend some time with my uncle and his family and see what cool kids my cousins’ children are growing up to be.

The view from Bruno’s office

My very effective time management skills also allow me to catch up with my friends Jenny and Tom, and to meet my new friend and fellow ”Roman in the world” Bruno. The night out with Tom is particularly fun, as we end up in a very cool speak-easy on a seedy street in the Tenderloin, hidden behind the window of the ”Wilson & Wilson private investigation agency”. The menu looks like a case file, and the excellent cocktails have names like ”The Maltese Falcon” or ”Strangers in the Night”. No pictures allowed here, but I put on my Humphrey Bogart hat and get right down to business by ordering ”The Big Sleep”.

The visit to San Francisco also gives me the occasion to rediscover two Art Museums that I had visited long time ago.

Going through the collection of American Art at the De Young museum I realize how useful this trip has been, as I now have better context to appreciate more fully the works on display. The highlight of the visit is however the exhibit about ”The Summer of Love”, giving a very interesting account of the hippie movement’s history in its ”capitol” San Francisco through fashion, art, music and political engagement. One of the most interesting things for me was to see the strong influence of the Art-Deco aesthetics on the artists designing the iconic posters promoting concerts and events during this period.

Another happy return was the one to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a place that had made such a great impression on me when I first visited it 10 years ago, thanks also to an amazing exhibition of the works of Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The Museum had been closed for renovations for a few years, so I had not had a chance to visit on any of my more recent trips to San Francisco. I was happy to see what a great job they had done with the remodeling, and to rediscover an amazing collection of modern and contemporary art, including several works by Warhol and Lichtenstein. In particular by this latter artist I found quite fascinating his “remix” of Monet’s views of Rouen’s Cathedral.

Fun fact, the SFMOMA is currently hosting an exhibition about ”Matisse and Diebenkorn”, which closes in 10 days. I don’t think I have ever seen queues as long as the ones to see this exhibition (and I say ”queues” plural because people were going from the queue for the ticket to the one for the elevator, to an even longer one to get into the actual exhibition… If this is what a normal Thursday looks like I would be curious to see what happens this weekend).

Last night I then boarded the Coast Starlight train which should get me to Portland in a few hours. Sadly, leaving San Francisco so quickly means that I am going to miss the ”Bay to Breaker” event this weekend, but I am sure Portland will more than make up for it.

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Day 16 – High desert, wild donkeys (and a grizzly bear)

Third day on the train. 5:30 am somewhere out in the Nevada desert.

I had promised myself I’d try to get up in time to see the sunrise. An uncomfortable seat and an expansive neighbour help me make sure I live up to that promise. The light of the new day pouring over our train and the landscape around us more than make up for the broken back and the lack of sleep.

Living the moment

The Nevada high desert is incredibly beautiful, and the marshes full of birds in the early morning light are an unexpected surprise that offer the opportunity for some amazing views as the newly risen sun stretches its rays over the surface.

Before we start climbing towards Reno and the Sierra Nevada, the desert presents us with yet another final surreal twist as the water dries out and all that all seems to be left on the ground is white salt (or so I am told…).

The hills are apparently populated by wild horses and donkeys. Someone points them out in the distance but I can’t seem to distinguish them (although as it turns out, I did catch a few horses on the ridge in one of my pictures 🙂 ).

As we enter the Sierra Nevada we keep climbing and climbing, and the landscape turns white once again, although this time it’s all snow slowly melting into hundreds of small streams and creeks running down the side of the mountain feeding tumultous rapids and the flowers timidly blooming around us.

Thanks to the vigilant eye of the two Amish guys sitting next to me, this time I do manage to catch a glimpse of the grizzly bear climbing up on the side of the mountain right below us, although this time the eye is quicker than the eye (so you’ll have to take my word for it).

Descending towards Sacramento it quickly becomes clear that the curtain is finally coming down on the marvellous show we have just witnessed.

The remaining few hours are a boring succession of low brown buildings and grazing cows across the plains of mid-California. I wonder if I might have been more excited about this landscape if I was just starting my trip in the direction of Chicago, still fresh and well-rested.

My knees hurt from spending most of the time of this trip sitting down, and I am now desperately longing for some hot water after almost 3 days without a shower (luckily, some deodorant and a change of clothes made the situation a lot less critical than it could have been otherwise).

As the train circles around the East Bay towards the final station, I realize that for most of my awake time on this trip I have done nothing but look out of the window. It has been some of the best spent time in a very long time.

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Day 15 – Over the hills and far away

May 15th: this incredible trip across America is now half-way through as I leave the East Coast and the Midwest behind and I start preparing for the Pacific North-West.

The second day on the California Zephyr presents us with the first “wow” experience of this long train trek as we join the Colorado river over mountains and canyons, often so close to the water it almost feels like we are floating on it.

After leaving Denver in the morning we climb slowly up the Rockies. The observation deck on the train is packed and the only complaint is how the sun creates glare on the windows and makes it difficult to get the best shot, but that is definitely a good problem to have.

The scenery slowly changes as the river grows, turns, falls, flexes its muscles, spits and roars, slapping hard the rocks that dare standing in its way.
Small temerarious boats tag along for a short ride, while the mountain forests give way to gorges and canyons with walls tall as a building, painted in a kaleidoscope of colours. Above all, the red rocks that melt every time it rains and give the river “Colorado” its name.

We reach Utah by late afternoon, and as we bid goodbye to the river the landscape abruptly changes, it turns dry and rough and yet it remains breathtaking. The weather changes too, and big dark clouds behind the mountains help making the end of this day even more dramatic.

Throughout this amazing day, as the scenery gets wilder and more extreme I can’t help but think of the men that built these tracks pretty much by hand over 100 years ago, what did their lives up here must have looked like. Old black and white pictures come to mind, small white tents pitched on the side of the mountain or in the middle of the desert, backbreaking work 12 hours a day in the harshest conditions, not exactly much time or energy left to enjoy the landscape.

The sun slowly fades over the horizon and night falls as we reach Salt Lake City. Time to try and catch a few hours of sleep before the last stretch to California.

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Chasing the sun in middle America

There is no wifi on this train (other than the open networks I have to hunt for during the brief stops at the stations along the way), so all I can do is read a book, look out the window, write.

Over the Mississippi, crossing from Illinois to Iowa and the landscape remains monotonous, almost like a videotape playing on loop. Field after field, dotted with the occasional red house or white silo, all looking the same for miles and miles. Yet it is mesmerizing in its empty repetitiveness, like a desert this rural landscape lifts up my thoughts like a plastic bag in the wind and brings them far.

I look at the little dot moving slowly on the map on my phone. Chicago is another planet, yet just a few hours away behind us. Small towns, little white wooden churches, a small station that only has a train or two a day to wave goodbye to. A quiet Sunday afternoon: people sitting on the porch, families enjoying a barbeque and a few cold beers.

At first I wonder how can people live here. Then I realize that one’s ”middle of nowhere” is someone else’s ”center of the world”. In the end, it’s always all just about finding your own place: some people are born there, others can never stop looking.

In the meantime, the sun sets over the plains as Iowa turns into Nebraska. The last dying light glows on the horizon, as we slowly keep chasing after it.

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Days 12-13 – Francesco Cetraro’s days off

On Friday, my good friend Daliah was so kind to take the day off to show me around the city, and she did an amazing job as my sherpa (as she both guided me around and carried my stuff in her backpack 🙂 ).

The company at breakfast was right our of a Disney movie

Considering we had a very packed schedule for the day, our first move was to stop to fill up with energy at the Original Pancake House, where both the food and the company were top notch.

With our bellies full we headed out on what in the end turned out to be a 20km walk, making our way first towards the shores of lake Michigan, passing through the Gold Coast neighbourhood and then strolling through the zoo. Sadly, the monkeys were off for the day too, so we quickly made our way towards the hip Lincoln Park neighbourhood for coffee instead.

From there, a quick hop on the metro took us to Bucktown, where I had a chance to order a custom made t-shirt from a store that looks like a Deli, and then spend some time browsing through the vintage shops that are abundant in the area (and now I kind of regret not getting that gorgeous Hugh Hefner’s red jacket on display 🙂 ).

After an equally hip lunch where I had a chance to sample the latest Hawaiian fad called Pokè (served in a burrito made of seaweed, which turned out to be quite tasty), we headed back towards downtown to check out the shiny Bean.  After finally getting the chance to put my feet up for a while, I rounded up a great day checking out some blues at Kingston Mines, as you do when in Chicago.

Another thing you are supposed to do in Chicago is try deep pan pizza. The experience was not exactly wonderful, but since I am told I simply didn’t visit the right place I’ll just pretend that never happened.

On Saturday, after sampling another Chicago speciality (the doughnut) I decided to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had a very interesting exhibition called ”Eternal Youth” featuring various artists’ works on the theme of coming-of-age and the depiction of the teenage years in contemporary art.

Another great discovery of the day was the Richard H. Driehaus Museum. Originally the residence of the Nickerson family, a wealthy family of Chicago bankers, it is today a great example of the styles and decors of the late 19th century looked like, with an incredible collection of artworks and stained glass lamps and windows from the likes of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Giannini & Hilgart.

The museum currently also hosts an exhibition of promotional posters from the Belle Epoque, featuring works from Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec, which fit quite beautifully with the style of the house.

In the evening, I headed out to the Cobra Lounge (which turned out to be part of the All Rise Brewery, with quite a few excellent beers on tap) to check out Radkey, a garage punk band made up of 3 brothers from Missouri. With a bass player that looked and moved like Phil Lynott and a singer with a voice halfway between Joey Ramone and Glenn Danzig, Radkey put up a hell of a show, and closing with a great cover of Misfits’ ”Last Caress” was the perfect icing on the cake and a great way to wrap up a great visit to Chicago.

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Day 11 – Chicago, mon amour!

Ok, I may have only been in Chicago a couple of days but I’ll go ahead and say: I think this is my favourite city in the US 🙂 .

The tropical storm that welcomed me on Wednesday night went over the city quickly, and each day the weather has been improving significantly, showing the city’s best side.

Seurat waiving at me from the other room

I have been looking forward to spending some time in Chicago, particularly to be able to finally visit the Art Institute of Chicago (ARTIC), one of the top Art Museums in the world holding a broad and massive collection.

Already the first room of the ARTIC’s collection of Impressionists is mind-blowing, with several Renoirs, Monet and most importantly the gorgeous “Paris Street: Rainy Day” by Gustave Caillebotte, so lively and realistic that standing close to it I almost felt like I could walk right into the scene and stroll around Paris.

In the next room, I could already see from the distance Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte“, one of my favourite paintings. But I decided to take things slow and delay a bit the pleasure to finally meet in person this amazing masterpiece, and took a stroll around the other rooms holding older European artworks, including some by El Greco, Rossetti and Cranach the elder.

Seurat

Ultimately, I finally stood face to face with Seurat’s masterpiece. From the little monkey on a leash to the grumpy man under the umbrella sitting next to the tree or the little girl in white enjoying a stroll in the sunshine with her mom (or the baby sitter maybe?), the level of detail and the liveliness of this picture gave me so much joy, and I think I spent 20 minutes just studying every single detail of this incredible artwork.

Two other luminous, idyllic paintings by Cross and Signac on the opposite wall contribute to making this room a little piece of paradise on earth.

Hopper’s “Nighthawks”

Another of the painting that I have been dying to see in real life is Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks“, such a strong and powerful allegory of human alienation and isolation even in what on the surface would look like a perfect social situation.

This institution is truly astonishing, and full of surprises room after room (including a “visit” by Whistler’s mom, on loan from the Musee d’Orsay 🙂 ).

I don’t think I can express how incredible spending a full day here has been. Even the contemporary art section (which is typically not my favourite) was a pleasant surprise with great works by Warhol, Lichtenstein and Alma Thomas, an incredible artist I got to know first in DC at the Museum for Women in Art.

Another incredible treasure of the ARTIC is the exhibition on outdoor art in Chicago, featuring the “America Windows” donated to the city of Chicago by Marc Chagall in 1977. The ARTIC’s collection covers also the work of famous architects that helped shape Chicago (and the world) with their work like Frank Lloyd Wright and Adler&Sullivan. Many elements of decor and even the entire trading room from the old Chicago stock exchange can be seen at the ARTIC.

I must say that my day at the ARTIC was definitely one of the best so far: this is a place that alone would justify a trip to Chicago, and I hope to get many more opportunities to spend time here in the future (maybe I should just get a job in Chicago? 😀 ).

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Kalamazoo – Luleå

On the long boring stretch driving through Michigan, one road sign caught my attention and brought back some memories.

A long time ago, in my exchange year in Uppsala, I went up to the deep north of Sweden to visit the ice hotel. I made the return trip by train, which from Kiruna to Uppsala takes about 16 hours of travel.

The following week, my friend Giuliano did the same trip with a couple of other friends. On the way back though, he forced the entire group to make a lengthy detour and head to the coast for a quick stop in the city of Luleå. The only reason was that he thought the name of the city sounded funny.

Giuliano was a bit crazy that way, he had the ingenuity and the talent for seeing how important all these small silly things are in making our time on this planet a bit more special and unique.

I am sure Giuliano would have found this trip I am making a bit crazy, he would have probably loved to come along (particularly for the opportunity to sample so many new interesting culinary specialties along the way). I am sure that if he had been with me, he would have made me turn and stop in Kalamazoo. Just because the name is funny.

I am grateful for all the silly things that every now and then remind me of him.

 

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Driving in America

TL-DR: it’s so boring!

The main problem is that when the scenery around is nice, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and can’t exactly stop to take pictures when you want.

Then there are those stretches like the 4 and a half hours I had to drive yesterday to get from Detroit to Chicago that seemed to never want to end.

Luckily I had downloaded a few hours worth of episodes of the amazingly funny “My dad wrote a porno” podcast to keep me entertained, but in general I was quite happy to finally spot Chicago’s skyline appear at last… Until I saw the kind of traffic I was heading into. Waze continuously changing its mind on the best route to the Hertz garage didn’t exactly help making the situation relaxing.

To top it off, when I got roughly one block away from my final destination​, the skies opened and a tropical monsoon unleashed on the city (another sign?).

In the end, it all worked out OK though, as I managed to make it to the garage 15 minutes before they closed, and instead of walking the 5 blocks left to my hotel, I spent 20 minutes in more traffic (but with my head dry) in an Uber ride 😃.

A few considerations about my roadtrip experience are in order:

  1. Speed limits are clearly a recommendation. To be honest I think that they are set quite low (70 mph/110 kmh is the highest I have seen), and with broad 3-4 lanes highways pretty much everybody around me was doing on average 15-20 mph over the limit. The few police cars along the way didn’t seem bothered much.
  2. Americans hate blinkers. So much that cars here don’t even have the dedicated orange lights you see pretty much everywhere else in the world, and instead the red position lights blink lightly the few times the car’s owner decides to use them.
  3. I loved the Cleveland Museum of Art and I think it was totally worth putting up with Hertz’s awful service and many hours behind the wheel to see it. Ironically though, the other 2 stops that were intended as “side fillers” – Pittsburgh and Detroit – turned out to be the ones that really made this experience great.

All in all, I am quite happy I am done with cars for this trip.

After a few days to explore Chicago, I look forward to experiencing America from the window of a train while someone else drives.

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Day 10 – Detroit rocks

After a pretty dull 3 hours drive from Cleveland, yesterday I eventually made it to Detroit around 6pm. The area around my hotel was pretty sad (apparently the highlight was the Subway around the corner, and a “Pancake house” a few blocks away), so I decided to head down to “The Loving Touch” in Ferndale for a gig I had saved on Facebook and that I knew pretty much nothing about.

And oh my was I in for an absolute treat! Starting from the excellent beer from the brewery next door, but mostly for the incredibly talented musicians I got to see play live.

Funny enough – coincidence or sign? – earlier in the day I was chatting with a friend about Jim Jarmusch’s movies, and this gig felt like getting thrown straight into “Down by Law” or “Dead Man“.

The evening started with Bob Fleming and the Drunk Girl Chorus, “a two person one man band from North Carolina, Bringing songs of sadness, darkness, bourbon, and murder”. Funny enough, they were not originally supposed to play but got called in earlier in the day and drove 5 hours straight to make it to Detroit in time for the show (and I am really happy they did 🙂 ).

The headliners of the show were the Legendary Shack Shakers from Kentucky. Even though the place was half empty, they put up one of the craziest, most energetic shows I have seen in years, a truly mesmerizing experience.

During the evening I also had a chance to chat with a few really nice people who really made me feel Detroit’s friendly vibe.

Before making my way to Chicago, the highlight of today was the Detroit Institute of Arts, a truly remarkable institution not only for its amazing collection, but particularly for its focus on African American art. The building itself is also a great structure, and the host of the magnificent Detroit Industry fresco cycle painted by Mexican artist Diego Rivera in the early 1930s.

The collection itself includes some great paintings by Picasso and Pissarro, and a few great examples of American Impressionism, alongside a very broad overview of African American artists spacing from members of the Harlem Renaissance like Marsh to more recent works like Wiley’s irreverent, provocative “cover” of Gericault’s “Officer of the Hussars”, challenging the “whiteness” of traditional portraits of military officers and heroes on shiny horses through history.

All in all, I was quite impressed by the great vibe I felt in Detroit, and I was a bit sad to leave so quickly… This is definitely a place I’d want to come back to sooner rather than later!

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Day 9 – In God’s country

Driving through Ohio was probably not as exciting as Pennsylvania, although a few parts along the shores of lake Erie were quite beautiful.

The monotony of the highway was interrupted by the sighting of quite a few religiously-inspired billboards. Besides quite a few huge Bible quotes, my personal favourite was the one with a big “What if you died tonight?” question followed by what looked like the two options of a multiple choice test, in capital letters: “Hell!” or “Heaven”, and a phone number to find out more (I am guessing many of those who feel the urge to call while driving might find out their personal answer sooner rather than later).

The importance of religion in this part of the country was also confirmed by a conversation I overheard at the bar in the evening, between a man and a woman who had clearly just met there. After showing each others pictures of their families, they got more personal with the man complaining about his marital problem and the woman asking him what Jesus would do and how would he be able to go show his face in church if he left his wife (or something like that… Life in Church was definitely a recurring topic). At that point I was quite tired and went to bed, so I have no idea how did that ended up: nevertheless, definitely not something I would have expected at a hotel bar 🙂 .

Considering the Cleveland Museum of Art was the main reason for getting creative and adding this road trip by car to my plan, I was happy to see it was definitely worth the effort, starting from the impressive structure that hosts this institution.

From the incredible work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose art-deco lamps and stained glass windows I have already had a chance to enjoy in other stops along my way before, to great American masters like Bellows and his incredibly dynamic boxing scenes (just look at the neck of the fighter on the right in the picture in the gallery below).

It is also always amazing to see how American artists like Childe Hassam or John Sloan interpret themes that their French impressionist counterparts have made famous (busy city streets, strolls in the park, men and women sitting in a cafè) but give them an American dimension that makes them interesting and appealing in their own right.

The Cleveland Museum has also an impressive collection of French masters, ranging from Van Gogh to Gauguin and Cezanne. Once again, one of my favourite pieces was a painting of Westminster by Derain, an explosion of colour that fills the eye and the mind.

Matisse’s “The Windshield” is another small gem of the collection, and I chuckled a bit at the idea of the artist sitting uncomfortably with his kit trying to get the picture right while the car eats the road (his son was driving though, so Matisse wasn’t being completely reckless 🙂 ).

Before leaving Cleveland, I decided to make a quick stop at the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame. The place has a wide collection of memorabilia, similar to what I have had a chance to see in the past at the Grammy Museum in LA or at the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle (now apparently called Museum of Pop Culture).

I think the main issue with this place is that, with very few notable exceptions, it focuses a lot on the history of American rock&roll, and not enough on how this genre expanded all over the world and developed in different directions. I particularly found it lacking in the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal section. All in all, a check on the map and a good spot to spend a couple of hours if you happen to be in Cleveland (in which case I’d still rather go to the Art Museum though 🙂 ), but not exactly a destination itself worth travelling to.