We’ve moved up the line from Chicago to Evanston, Chicago’s first suburb and home to Northwestern University, where my husband is attending a short course at Kellogg School of Management. Evanston is a model university town, it’s leafy, full of great bookshops and hideouts, and beautiful scenery. Our room here looks over Lake Michigan. Yet only half an hour back to Chicago city. It’s my favourite place in the US so far.

Still, it’s eerily quiet with most of the students gone to Florida for Spring Break, snow falling now and then between bare trees, closed beaches and sports fields.