HaveKidsWillTravel

We used HomeExchange.com to look for the opportunity of a home exchange in Chicago, and were able to offer a non-simultaneous swap for our holiday home (which makes timing things a bit easier) and were lucky enough to be offered a cool old coach-house for a week in Ukrainian village – a great introduction to Chicago life in a lively downtown neighbourhood.

This gave us a bit of time to recover from a hard week of cross-country travel, find our feet in Chicago and figure out a plan of attack for the daunting task of settling into life in a big city. Next step was a furnished apartment for a month – just long enough to see if I could find work, a good area for the kids to go to school, an apartment to sign a lease on, and kick the tires of Chicago as a place to settle in for season or two.

And Chicago really is one of the great cities of the world – in a laid back, relaxed mid-west kind of a way. Unlike most US cities, it’s a city of neighbourhoods with a real urban center – great architecture, museums, parks, and a big city bustle without the hustle of somewhere like New York.

And if we’re going to live in a big city, we want to live in the city – a downtown neighbourhood somwhere on the ‘L’ train, walking distance to everything, rather than out in the endless suburban sprawl where everything involves a drive somewhere. And there are some great sounding public schools on the inner North side, funky old 1920s apartments and vibrant neighbourhoods.

We got out to one of the last Cubs games of the season at Wrigley field, the Field Museum, some of the big parks and gardens, and drove around the lake to the Michigan sand dunes (apparently a good surf spot in the right conditions!) – and by the end of the month, had convinced ourselves that a year in Chicago would be great fun.

The job-hunt, though, turned out to be a little more fraught – and we got down to literally the last few hours before having to book our onward journey when I got confirmation that yes, actually, there was a job to keep us here.

And so the next stage of our adventure begins!