Chicago Vacay Weekend Highlights

Surprise! I was in Chicago over the weekend! Some of you who follow me on social media probably realized that MG and I had taken a little long weekend trip to Chi-town :)

We left early Thursday morning and got to Chicago and our hotel around 11am. We immediately dropped off our bags and went to explore. Lucky for us, the weather was perfection the entire weekend.

Here are my Chicago weekend highlights (prepare for photo overload!)

-obligatory selfie in the Bean

-delicious lunch at The Gage (get the smoked salmon BLT if you go!)

-walking around Millennium park, and then all the way up to Oak Street Beach (so cool to see beach and lake in one direction, and behind you see huge city buildings)

-shopping along magnificent mile

-room with a view

-happy hour at City Winery on the river and meeting two local girls who we ended up chatting it up and exchanged info with after asking them to take our photo

-Took in the beautiful views on our walk to dinner

-Dinner at Joe's seafood: had the best crab bisque of my life, crab stuffed shrimp and this amazing corn they had on special

-Made friends with our waiter who gave us his info to hook us up if we ever came back to the city again (seriously, people were SO nice!!). He also hooked us up with a free key lime pie for dessert that we couldn't finish because we were so full!

-Architecture Boat cruise (highly recommend if you guys have never been to Chicago!)

(we saw a ton of buildings and neat architecture, but these are just some highlight photos)

-partook in Chicago dogs (luckily we had walked 7+ miles the day before)

-rented a two person coupe/bike and rode out to the planetarium and got a fun view of the city from the lake

-got a pre-dinner drink at The Wit rooftop (my drink was called Liquid Lunch and it was SO tasty)

(the building on the right is the one they use in The Good Wife)

-dinner at The Purple Pig--waited an hour for a table but it was SO worth the wait because the food was insanely good (and the sangria was almost the size of my head!)

-a yummy early breakfast at Wildberry, then explored Millennium park before all of the tourists came out. 

(this was actually two screens that would change faces, and you could walk in the middle of the water between the two screens)

-did a walking food tour in the Gold Coast/Old Town area where we got to try Chicago deep dish pizza, a sushi place, tea, sample different spices, tried out oils and vinegars, a fudge/chocolate shop, and a bakery with some perogees and macaroons, all while learning about the history of the area

(that building photo on the right is the old Playboy Mansion)

-met a really awesome couple from Detroit who were celebrating their one year anniversary, and were staying at our hotel, too

-got a beer with them after the tour and realized how much we all had in common; exchanged information and made plans to meet up later that night after dinner

-spent some time along the river people and boat-watching (ended up chatting it up with the captain of a small, insanely gorgeous boat, who gave us some of the boat swag)

-went to dinner and then met up with the Detroit couple to go up to Signature Lounge of the Hancock building for a city-wide view and a round of drinks

-got to take in the view once the clouds cleared

-up early Sunday morning for our flight back, and got reunited with our little love, who was exhausted from his time with our friends while we were gone

There was seriously not a bad moment of the trip. We did so much walking (which was good because of all of the insanely delicious food we were eating), got to see so many cool spots, and meet some really awesome people, and getting to do it all with MG was the best part. Honestly, the worst part of it all was leaving.

Chicago definitely has a place in my heart as one of my favorite cities!