Thanksgiving Tip - Chicago

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2010 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. 

The name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami–Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion; it is known to botanists as Allium tricoccum and known more commonly as "ramps". The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the eponymous wild "garlic" grew profusely in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:

"... when we arrived at the said place called "Chicagou" which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region."

The city has had several nicknames throughout its history, such as the Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, and City of the Big Shoulders.

Our first stop on our flight to Washington State to spend Thanksgiving with Beverly and Mark Losh was Chicago. I first visited this city in the summer of 1970 when I took the Toronado my father had bought in Spokane in the fall of 1969 to Miami to be shipped to Venezuela. In Chicago lived my cousin Carmencita and her newly acquired husband Heracilio Prieto, better known as "Archie" or "Achí."

I began my solitary journey from Deer Park, WA, by road on June 24, 1970, and arrived in Miami on July 14 of that same year, of course. In total I must have traveled about 4,900 miles.

The second time I visited Chicago was in 1989 with Siomi when we attended the exhibition and sale of household products to be sold in supermarkets.  At that time I was a partner of Antonio José Cisneros and we had a company (Cialon SRL) which imported products for CADA supermarkets.

On this occasion, with a very limited time of visit, we dedicated ourselves to trying the fabulous and famous Chicago hot dogs:

The bad thing about those famous hot dogs is that they use the least pleasant part of the dog.

To prepare myself for the trip to the north, where the temperature should already was to be cold, I bought a Russian winter hat on Amazon and I looked like a "bolo", as Russians were called in Castro's Cuba.

Since we had plenty of time before continuing our journey northwest, I decided to clean my boots.

And that's what we did, and when we were called to the departure port to board our plane to Spokane, WA, we left one of our bags behind: horror! Leaving a carry-on bag forgotten at Chicago airport, the third busiest in the US, meant losing it. However: we decided to look for it! And it was where we had left it! That was our experience at Chicago airport.