Beezzy beezzy days

Our Chariot, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

Sorry to have missed blogging all day yesterday & most of today... Mom & I took a little trip, Sunday, to see Die Zauberflöte in Chicago. I got to go because Mom's best friend (who has season tix to the Lyric) had made plans to be out of state for the week, so this was my Christmas Present Extraordinaire.

We caught the sunrise special out of Galesburg, IL (actually, Amtrak calls it the Illinois Zephyr, but, as you may be able to see by the photo, it arrives at just about the rosy dawn, this time of year). This, my friends, is the way to travel... let somebody else do the driving, while you sit back and enjoy the scenery...

Mom takes in the scenery.01, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

and save yourself some money on gas, as well.

So we went from rural Illinois

Illinois farmland, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

to Them TAWL buildin's

Insert Dramatic Music Here, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

in what seemed like the blink of an eye (but, maybe I had dozed off like the guy across the aisle from me on the train had).

At any rate, that was the building we were a-lookin' fer... it even said so on the back wall of the place, just above the river.

Bat @ Opera House, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

We entered a little more than half an hour before curtain, as, I am told, is the standard practice at the Lyric, and made our way to front-row-nosebleed seats by way of the stairs (stopping halfway up to visit the room of rest). The opera itself transcends this pitiful blogotext (and, besides, they don't allow amatuer, unscheduled photography in the opera house), so allow me to say that... Amtrak ought to schedule its southbound IL Zephyr's departure about 10 minutes later, so that we could have seen the final 3 minutes and still caught the elevator down (my crummy knees won't let me descend stairs without pain).

Still, as we hurried to get back to Union Station, me muddah and I had just enough time to stop and take note of the gibbous moon hanging over the shoulder of the Sears Tower...

Moon off Sears Tower's Shoulder, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

It was a lovely way to end our visit to the city of my birth.

By the time we debarked the train, it was cloudy, windy, and colder, for the final 20-minute drive home.

I'm still whistling the aria from the Queen of the Night, this evening (I'm a contralto. If I tried to sing it instead of whistling, I'd probably permamently hurt myself. But, dang, the stellar performance last night made it seem easy!).