Chicago

 Last weekend my amazing husband stole me away for a 4 day getaway to Chicago for our 5th Wedding Anniversary.  It was an amazing trip!  If you've never been to the Windy City you must go and be sure to leave the kiddies at home.  The city is stunning! Chicago has a very strong European influence with the river flowing right through the centre of the city, lift bridges every block, architecture to die for, lush gardens lining the sidewalks and soft sand beaches hugging the  beautiful skyline. While we did walk for 7+ hours each day, I found this trip very relaxing and a great chance for my husband and I to reconnect. We've spent the entire summer doing things for others and desperately needed this time escape.  We didn't make an itinerary but we did have a list of things that we wanted to do. We managed to fit in everything on our to-do lists and much, much more! Here's what we managed to do and highly recommend everything!

- Sat on the Navy Pier for 2 nights drinking beer in the beer garden and watching the world go by (and the sun set)
- Watched fireworks on the pier (every Wed & Sat night at 10:15pm all summer long!)
- Went up to the John Hancock Observatory
- Sat on the beach
- Had morning coffee on the canal
- 90 minute boat tour of the canal/skyline (we purchased a $35 package at the Hancock building for both the observatory and the boat tour - best deal in town for sure!)
- Visited a steakhouse, a burger joint, a pizzeria and ate sushi.
- Did1 hour of shopping on the Mag Mile (we didn't want to waste our time in change rooms)
- Wandered Millennium Park & Grant Park (saw the Bean & Buckingham Fountain)
- Garrett's Popcorn (ate it while we watched the fireworks. You MUST go there!!!!)
- Walked EVERYWHERE! We balanced out all the beer and food by working it off walking
- Stayed at a hotel that included breakfast
- Drove into the city - we didn't have to worry about a schedule, packed as much as we wanted and got to stop along the way to do some Target shopping! (Parking at our hotel for 4 days was only $87)
- stayed in a cool little boutique hotel (we knew we'd never have the opportunity to do that again so we went for it)
- booked our hotel on www.hotels.com to save some coin
- drank coffee in bed and watched the local morning news
- We didn't rush! We wanted to make sure this was a relaxing experience. We didn't make reservations for anything.  We wanted to just go with the flow.
- We traveled alone.  It was awesome to fly by the seat of our pants and do whatever we wanted

The food was great. Like any big city there was a huge spectrum of the types of food and the prices.  Steakhouses were everywhere!  We went to one that was considered a mid-priced steakhouse called Flemming's.  It happened to be next door to our hotel but came highly recommended by the staff at our hotel. It ran about $60 per person (not including drinks). The steak was delicious and so was the wine! They had a 4 page wine list. Worth the money for sure. But from what I could tell there were a ton of awesome options if you wanted a good steak. For one of our lunches we stumbled into a place called Epic Burger.  We sat on the patio and enjoyed AMAZING handmade burgs for cheap. We later found out that it was one the most popular Burger joints in the city! I'm so glad we turned down that side street.  That evening we were still full from our Epic burgers so we decided on a small little sushi place two blocks over from our hotel called Sushi Taiyo. Yummy! We had read and heard great things about Pizzeria Uno, which happened to be 3 doors down from our hotel so we saved it for our last night in the city.  It was at least an hour wait anytime so we put our name in and went back to our hotel and got ready.  Since my husband and I like different things on our pizza we ordered individual sized pizzas.  I'm going to be honest - we weren't overly impressed.  I did not like the crust at all.  It was dry and gritty but I loved the middle of my pizza.  My guess is it would be less dry if we ordered a bigger pizza so if you decided to go there, don't get the individual size.  And here I thought I loved all pizza... hmm....
 
What a great trip away - awesome company, great food and a beautiful city!  We would definitely go back if given the opportunity. Thank you E! Happy Anniversary!