A Taste of Chicago
a few weeks ago, we took a few trips! i flew to portland to have dinner with my good friend and riley flew to salt lake city to spend the day with a couple of his friends! we love our friends so i feel lucky we are able to do that! then, me and riley took the red eye to chicago! we looked at the flight and it said there were zero seats open but we decided to try anyway. we went to the airport and actually got seats! the best seats other than first class too!! we planned on sleeping the whole way but we probably only slept for 1.5 hours. so we were exhausted the whole day but were still able to have a good time! this was our first time to chicago so we just got a little taste but we could tell that it’s an awesome city! we loved the public transit and how walkable the city was. unfortunately, i have this misconstrued impression of the world now thanks to seattle. since it’s always cold here, i assume the rest of the world also has our same problem so we wore jeans. it turned out to be a hot day and we were walking everywhere so there were several moments of me complaining and regretting wearing the pants!
we started the day with some donuts at the doughnut vault. it was in a really cool area that had a lot of design firms and shops–i’ll have to explore it more next time! the doughnut vault is just a teeny tiny place with so much charm and such a pretty facade. the donuts were just as good as the design. riley took one bite and said “i’m never going to want to eat donuts anywhere else again!” it’s safe to say this is his new favorite donut place, ever.
we went over to millenium park, saw the bean (it was worth looking like a tourist) and took a little break in the grass by the harbor. then we took the train to wrigley field. there was a game going on and we seriously considered going. instead, we just walked around the stadium and enjoyed the crowds. it was like a big baseball tailgate! wrigley reminded me of the red sox stadium because it’s just right there in the middle of everything. there are even apartment buildings across the street that have rooftop balconies that were hopping with people watching the game with the amazing views! it was the coolest thing! baseball is a whole other world on the east coast and mid west!
for dinner, we had to get some good ‘ol chicago pizza! we went to lou malnati’s and were pleasantly surprised. they did warn us that it takes 30-45 minutes to make the pizza, but even though we were starving, it was worth the wait. this pizza has won a bunch of awards and contests, so we think we made a good choice! we also tried their pizookie for good measure :) our last stop was just walking around the sears tower (we’ll go up it someday) and checking out michigan ave. that’s one that we probably won’t do again because we’re not big on shopping when we’re trying to experience a new place :)
thank you so much to everyone who sent us messages with suggestions of what to do! there were so many things to see that we are already planning our next trip back!