Chicago

Last weekend I had the chance to jump in a vehicle with two other girls and go to Chicago!  I had the best time.  Its taken me this long to tell you about it because it takes that long to catch up after leaving the hubby and kids home for four days:)  First of all, let me tell you that we had a great traveling group.  They were completely fine with the fact that I’m pretty miserable in the car and had to relegate myself to the back seat with my pillow for a few hours on the way back:)  On the way there, we split up the drive into three hour sections, one after prayer meeting and one the next morning.  So I survived that quite well, but the six hours on the way home was a test!  Thankfully, Krista managed to get off the highway and navigate us around what turned out to be a gas explosion down the road and we only got delayed by 10 minutes!!  She’s my favourite for that alone!  Also, both Margie and Krista are okay with silences, frequent food breaks, and walking everywhere.  We got along great.

If you go to Chicago you should stay at the Hampton Inn on East Wacker.  It was amazing and within walking distance of everything we wanted to do.  Most things were less than ten minutes walking.  And it was beautiful.  And its brand new!  We found out that it was only three weeks old when we were there.  You should stay there:)

We made sure that we saw Millenium Park and “The Bean” and took the obligatory pictures:)  We walked down by the lake which was lovely.  We went up the Sears tower.  On a day with zero visibility.  So that was probably only half as cool as it could’ve been!  One of my favourite things was going to the Art Museum.  I never really thought that I would stand in a whole room full of Monet paintings.  That was awesome.  I must say, a lot of the art I don’t really get.  Like the entire room with just a white couch and words being projected on a wall.  Really, I’m pretty sure even I could pull that off:)  But I guess there must be some significance I missed:)  My absolute favourite thing we did was the architecture boat tour with shoreline sightseeing.  It was a gorgeous day to be out on the boat and our tour guide was great.  We did it right off the bat and it was a great introduction to Chicago and some of its history.

Of course, being a group of three girls, we had to do some shopping on the Magnificent Mile!  Best buy there was THE perfect tank top from Macy’s.  You know my pain right?  The perfect tank top needs to be high enough, thick enough, long enough, the right colour, etc.  Almost impossible to find!  But I found them there!  So exciting:)  And the weirdest thing I bought was culottes.  At the Gap.  Seriously.  They were in almost every store.  Who knew?  If only they were this cool when I was growing up independent baptist!!!:)

Last but not least, we had a lot of great food!  Tried out some local restaurants which were fantastic and of course we had to have some deep dish pizza.  My cousin and his fiance recommended that we go to Giordanos and it was amazing!  I honestly didn’t expect to like it, but it was delicious.  You need to eat there.  The girls also introduced me to Chipotle.  I know, maybe not the place you should go when you’re in a foodie city like Chicago, but after a long day of shopping, it sure was amazing to get something to go and eat in bed in our pjs:)

Chicago, you were a great city and I had a wonderful time!