farlands | traveling near and far

Last year we took a truly wonderful cruise of the Baltic Sea. It was a work-related trip for me as I was in a hosting role, and happily, Jeff was able travel with me. I have to say Jeff and I both fell in love with Copenhagen. The slightly gritty yet architecturally interesting look of the city fit with what we enjoy, and I think the fact that we got everywhere by bike or on foot made it that much more special. My favorite spot of all was  Tivoli Gardens . Of course, I adore amusement parks so I was already primed to like the place. However, it ended up being much more of a beautiful experience than I expected. We went in the late afternoon of a warm but soon-to-be rainy day, and decided to get a few rides in while we could. At the entrance, I saw a restaurant with a variation of the word I recognized for 'cake', and made a mental note to come back. Captivating The rides ranged from older and quaint to quite modern, and getting a glimpse of Copenhagen from the ta...

Over the past two weeks, I have spent more time in the Chicago suburbs than in any time of my life. As such, I found some of the preconceived notions to be true (never ending, cookie-cutter, etc.). On the other hand, there were pockets of beauty, bounty and unusual artificiality so I felt compelled to write about it. To begin, I looked into where and what a suburb is, relative to Chicago. Here is one take on it, from station WGN in Chicago in a July 18, 2018 article on the station's website: We asked Josh Ellis at the Metropolitan Planning Council to help us figure this out. His answer: it's complicated... "I think of a suburb primarily as a residential community where during the day the majority of that working population leaves the community to go somewhere else to work," Ellis said. "Historically that somewhere else would have been the heart of the downtown of some city... but these days you can work in so many places in our region." So a s...