and then we are done

So we were supposed to.... Leave on a three week trip to New Orleans, Miami, and Sarasota. To spend time in the warm weather before we headed back to Chicago and packed to leave for Spain. Well, best laid plans and all that... I am fairly certain "God" just laughs at stuff like this because of course we went to the appointment at the consulate and didn't have the paperwork we needed from our own Department of State (eight weeks+and counting - we were told 5-6 weeks). 

So we tossed all the cards in the air and watched where they fell. We had a grace period from the Consulate of ten days to get the missing piece (the full dossier was literally dozens of papers for each of us). A week of sleepless nights and a request to our congressman got us to the final submission. Now we wait. They have our passports so we can't leave the country.

But these days I think it's dinner time at 4:30 because it's so dark. Have to get away while we wait. So, soon we are off for a "reverse order" trip (as the only things that couldn't simply be rebooked were the Sarasota segment arrangements during the week before Thanksgiving.)

Honestly we need a vacation so the sitting and waiting doesn't drive us crazy. And lord knows we can't just stay home.  So in prep for our long delayed trip (three times canceled from COVID and immediately post COVID) to N.O.La. I have given you a few photos from a couple of prior trips. 

To my mind there are only a few places you can go on the mainland  US and feel like you are in a foreign country. New Orleans is one of them. 

So after much tsoris regarding the Apostille needed for our NLV application we are finally done... the applications were submitted this morning at the Spanish Consulate! Now in 5-6 weeks we should be in possession of the visas and on our way to Spain.

As a result of all the delays we have now canceled our original reservations and re-booked for an apartment nearer to where we stayed last year- on the edge of the "walking city" and old town.... 

So we now will be using the same Chinese store we did last year- 

and be around the corner from the same park we used for outdoor hours in the spring - the one that had art shows and sales on Sundays- and an excellent gelateria along the east side :-)

 

not far from the Setas and close to Corte Ingles where Phil already knows the grocery store and also close to an Aldi across the Parque del Duque from the Corte, so a comfortable place to stay - and continue our explorations of Sevilla.

Meanwhile, because our friends knew we were stressed by the apostille issue and we had canceled our plans for NOLa and Miami they had us for dinner at their place and ordered in all kinds of goodies from NOLa restaurants! Here is the menu for the dinner:

Dinner with our favorite supermodel Honeysuckle Arkebauer, a fabulous gift from friends who knew we were feeling down about our travel plans being disrupted by the visa application. So they snapped into action and had us over for the New Orleans dinner we would have been eating tonight. The menu is included but we had a number of NOLa favorites!

By the time dessert came the pup was pooped. So she skipped the lovely cake (saving her supermodel figure) and took a nap in the hall.

so now we are getting ready to go to Sarasota then Miami and then New Orleans (the reverse order of our originally planned trip). When we get back we hope we are close to having the NLV and our passports ready for travel to Spain as ex-pats! 

We wait and we wait and we wait

Yes - we are waiting still- today we took matters into our own hands and contacted a new service to get the document we need but they need 6 weeks... much gnashing of teeth... meanwhile we did go to the Deli exhibit at the Holocaust museum...

Fun walk down memory lane. A number of haunts from my youth memorialized and our regular local deli made it to the exhibit.  A really excellent recap of a part of our culture we are losing.  Many delis were founded by Holocaust survivors and subsequent generations didn't stay in the business. A story told across many of the immigrant communities. We still get deli a few times a year for "old times sake" but a lot of my personal favorites are gone. Ashkenaz on Cedar, Mort's on Wabash, DBKaplan's in Water Tower, the Belden Deli, Mel Markon's.... Delis used to be a staple in our repertoire of choices for good soup and sandwiches (now we have???? Panera????)

Been to many NYC delis - this and Katz's were among my favorites.

Ate carryout from here many many nights when I was a young litigator - always ordered turkey and swiss with lettuce tomato mayo on kaiser roll

Katz's (where a sign hangs over this table)

Been to two locations of this one. The pre and post fire....

Barak Obama eats here but we've never made it before its early closing time.

Phil's and my regular neighborhood deli from when we lived in Boy's Town thru today in North Center. Sadly, we lost Danny the "ever present" owner in the last couple of years. Tough when someone who has been there through decades of visits is no longer there.

Another favorite from my early career - when my parents would come to visit Chicago, we'd have at least one lunch at DBKaplan's. It was a few blocks from where I lived on Bellevue just off LSD.

Our Sunday morning fare virtually every week.

Places I've visited indicated by the red dots

So after spending time at the deli exhibit yesterday Phil and I got to reminiscing about the delis we used to go to when we both practiced in the Loop. One place we always think our paths must have crossed, long before when we finally met, is the deli in the Mallers building (a place in the loop which once was one of the diamond centers of Chicago).  It was an old building with elevators operated by humans and those accordion gates to keep you inside the elevator car. When you got off the elevator you didn't see the door to the restaurant because it was around the corner and down the hall to the end. You knew you got off on the right floor because you saw the sign with the arrow just after exiting the elevator. The place was small just a counter and maybe a dozen tables. The photo is from our era of working in the loop. The restaurant closed (sometime before 2009) #oldtimes #pastlives