You can visit relatives for Thanksgiving, of course, but you can’t eat turkey all the time. If you’ve never been to the windy city, you’ll find plenty of things to do. The secret to really visiting a place is to ferret out the out-of-the-way places that the locals know about but the tourists miss.

One such place in Chicago is a grocery store. I suppose every big city has its really interesting grocery store, and Chicago’s is the Fox and Obel food market. They wouldn’t let me take a picture of the interior, but here’s a rendering of the outside on their web site:

One of three entrances

Proximity to places like this is a good reason to live in a big city. They have a small restaurant/ neighborhood hangout (breakfast, lunch, and supper); they do catering; and their inventory is the most scrumptious selection of cheeses, meats, fresh produce, candy, and exotic goodies you won’t find anywhere else. French foot-long marshmallows, tea in pyramidal tulle (I think it’s tulle) bags, cheeses with unpronounceable names, grass-fed organic beef aged on site, $175 vinegar (no lie—it’s so old that half has evaporated though the wax seal), not to mention ready-made foods fit for a gourmet, and fresh baked goods from the kitchen, said kitchen visible through large glass windows. And the people behind the counters are experts, eager to talk about their products, and generous with the samples. Worth the trip just to shop there.

Do you have a favorite grocer? Tell us about it in the comments.

Rule 1: Don’t do too many things the day before you leave. Save the day for packing, clean up the house a bit, and head out a little ahead of schedule in a nice, relaxed frame of mind. And what planet does this happen on? I butchered and cleaned a dozen turkeys and eight pheasants (no lie) at a farm about an hour away. We had to finish the laundry. Relatives came to stay the week—they are going to hold Thanksgiving dinner for the kids and a dozen extended family while we are gone. Oh yes. The turkey is for our neighbors (best neighbors in the world) instead of for ourselves because the relatives cooking the turkey (that’s another set of relatives besides the ones staying the week) live out of town and they didn’t want to cook a turkey in a strange kitchen, so they’re cooking one at their place and bringing it down. (Imagine that! Passing up a farm-grown hand-picked turkey for a familiar kitchen!) Then there’s loading up the truck with the furniture we’re delivering. I measured and it’ll just fit. And we had at least three student-age person-activity deliveries, and a trip to the grocer. Didn’t get to the feed store to pick up feed for the chickens, so I gave detailed instructions to our house guests on what to get. Oh yes—we have been working on some gifts to bring along, so we had to paint, then fire several pieces of porcelain in the kiln early enough so things could cool down before we packed them. We finally crashed about an hour past bedtime.

Rule 2. Get plenty of sleep the night before. Yeah, right.

Rule 3: Don’t worry if you leave later than planned. We had things pretty ready by the time we got to bed the night before, so we left only half an hour behind schedule, and felt pretty good about it. So we have this rule down in spades.

Rule 3: Don’t get lost. Watch the following posts to see how we fared.

The last post was about one of the biggest cities in the world. Here’s a little info about one of the smallest—Terrace, Minnesota.

Terrace is so out of the way, it’s not even on the way to someplace else. It’s easy to miss even if you look it up on Google Maps. The population last time I was there was about two dozen, and most of the folks had Norwegian accents.

The town is home to one of the few remaining water-powered grain mills in the state. It’s no longer functioning, but you can still see the turbine and tell where the millrace, now filled in, runs under the road. Three times the site hosted the Minnesota Orchestra, once performing the 1812 Overture with live cannons aimed out over the millpond. Picture thousands of people descending on this hamlet for an evening open-air concert given by one of the world’s foremost orchestras. People talked about it for years. They still have a popular fiddling contest every year, and a few other events, and the mill museum is open to the public.

To check out the mill online, go to terracemill.org.  And if you want to get away from it all and still do a bit of shopping (they have a gift shop, maybe a small eatery) it’s worth the drive. Take some pictures and share them here.

Question: How many new Yorkers does it take to replace a light bulb?
Answer: (gruffly) So who wants ta know?

New Yorkers have a reputation for discourtesy. The city is crowded, traffic bumper-to-bumper. Don’t go near Central Park, and everyone is out to take advantage of the suckers from out of town. Right?

Not exactly. The several New Yorkers I talked with were all nice. The city has at least a dozen parks, and the Central Park precinct has the lowest crime rate in NYC. With that many people, close is the only way to fit all those cars in, and new Yorkers have worked out a system that works. It’s just different from how less-populated areas drive. (So ride with someone experienced driving in NYC. Do not attempt it yourself.)

You might not consider NYC a vacation spot unless you’re from Upper Coffeepot, MT (real place), in which case NYC would probably be a real change of pace. People visit NYC to do something other than relax. A good vacation is a change of pace, and NYC can certainly provide a pace different from most other places.

So consider NYC: attend a play, check out the world’s biggest planetarium, visit one of the many museums, walk Central Park, saunter through one of the many fascinating neighborhoods. Eat at a local eatery. With connections (such as, ahem, a travel club), you can find a clean motel room for maybe $100 a night (and it goes up from there). Consider staying in nearby new Jersey and taking the train into town. That’s an adventure itself. Taxis and walking are the ways for a visitor to get around in town.

It isn't always this crowded—sometimes it's worse!

Do your homework—study a map, get some brochures, talk with someone who’s from there. Plan what you want to see, and don’t be too rigid about sticking with the plan, but have one. If you can, bring a guide, but it’s not strictly necessary. People will give directions if you don’t bend their ear too much with your life history.

When you get back, come here and tell us about it.

You decide to go on a vacation, a really nice one, to an exotic location, or at least something more exotic than Aunt Martha’s. How do you decide where to go and how to get there?

You could go online (that’s where you are right now, you’ll notice) and do a little research and reading on the subject of travel (which you’re also doing right now). How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? What about hidden costs, problems you might not think of, secret discounts you don’t know about, pitfalls in processing—many dangers lurk in traveling beyond familiar confines. All that research—and figuring out how the processes work—is time consuming. What’s your time worth?

You might visit a travel agent. Travel agents have an unearned reputation for being expensive. After all, they have offices and all those fancy travel books and posters. All those ads are supplied by the cruise lines and travel companies, and that’s who pays the agent, too, not you, normally. If an agent has to charge you for a service, they will tell you up front. if you’re in a travel club, you can expect the agent to reduce or eliminate the commission, too, further reducing the price.  Ask yourself: What’s a travel agent’s knowledge and experience worth? They know the ropes, pitfalls, they have access to all the discounts, and they’ll save you time—after you get to know a travel agent, one phone call can take care of everything.

Of course, you have the same problem picking a travel agent as you do making travel decisions online: Who’s good? How do you tell? Here are a few ways to take the measure of a travel agent.

• Does the person have a connection to you? (This rule applies to real estate sales and funeral directors, too.) Relatives, acquaintances, friends, and friends of friends are motivated to take especially good care of you.
• Is the person well traveled? Especially if they have been to where you want to go, but all travel experience seasons a person to the rigors of travel. A travel agent who has personally been around the block a few times is a fount of wisdom and advice, and they can tell you what to expect.
• Is the person organized? Not necessarily neat (but that’s a good indicator), but can they find your file immediately? Do they know where everything is? That sort of thing. You don’t want an absent-minded professor as your travel agent. You never (okay, seldom) see a good travel agent surprised by something, and they keep their promises about when they’ll have something ready. They are ready for you when you show up after the first, introductory meeting.
• Do they answer phone calls and emails promptly? This is a must. Even if they have to tell you they need more time, they don’t make you wait for a reply.
• Do they want to do a good job for you? You can tell this by the number of choices they present you with. A lazy travel agent won’t research multiple options, won’t hunt for the best price. You see them look up one thing and give you a price. A good agent will hunt down good deals, think of options (a nearby less expensive location, for instance) that you didn’t consider, check with several wholesalers, give you a lot to choose from.

A good travel agent can make your next trip more enjoyable.

See if you get the pun:

(Note the sign on the back wall)