Central and southern Ill-i-noise.
How central IL? We lived in Champaign for a bunch of years.
Southern IL is quite different from northern IL. Like a different state. I took our oldest to SIU Carbondale for school, and on a whim decided to take my time and take back roads back to NWIL. Until you get to Springfield, it's quite rural.
“How central IL? We lived in Champaign for a bunch of years.”
I was born in Champaign. My mom lived there most of her school years and her parents lived there until they died. We lived in my grandmother’s house/apartment building in Champaign (near Westside Park) when I was very small and later we lived in very a small town north and east of Champaign, Hoopeston - until my dad’s post-WWII military service had us transfered around the country.
I have been back to Champaign quite a number of times, and in spite of it - Champaign-Urbana - being a large university city (home of the University of Illinois), I cannot think of anything in particular to tell a tourist to go see.
Champaign to me seems very different from either the urban Chicago area or nearly everywhere south of Champaign (very rural).
To me Springfield always seemed like a “gritty” town, which always seemed strange as it is the state capital.
My dad grew up in Decatur and I have visited there more than once, but have nothing paricularly notable to recommend it.
I went to Chicago for business/professional reasons a number of times in the 1990s, but it seems it was in better shape then than it is now. I feel sorry for some places I enjoyed there, like the Sheraton Hotel with common space and room interiors based on Frank Lloyd Wright designs. And it was an easy walk from the Sheraton either out to and up Michigan Avenue’s “Miracle Mile”, or shopping and dining out along the Navy Pier, or up along Lake Michigan. Ahh, but alas, I wouldn’t do it today.
I keep wondering how low will Illinois and Chicago half to sink before it has a population that kicks out 100% of the Leftist “old guard” - a genration, two???