Chicago Adventures

On September 22-25th, Nikki and I hit Chicago for some exploration and to own our dorky tourist inner selves. It was kind of a random decision about a month beforehand were we threw out the idea of an overnight somewhere close to home for Nikki's bday then ended up booking Chicago. We booked our hotel and train tickets from Dearborn a few weeks before.

We left Friday morning around 7:30am for Dearborn, which is just outside Detroit in a safe, nice area where I didn't have to pay for parking!

We made a brief stop between Port Huron and Detroit at the Meijer for train drinks and snacks and were happy to see that if there were a tornado we were in the right spot. We gave ourselves extra buffer time in case the border was busy so the 45 minutes we spent in Meijer was totally acceptable.

The Dearborn station was definitely the way to go! It was so nice and my car didn't get touched leaving it in the free parking lot for a 4 days!

Our train was about 15 minutes delayed and we got on about noon with only one mix-up of me calling the train "choo choo". We had some lunch from Meijer and these coolers that we had no idea were so strong... We felt pretty bad ass hiding them from the train workers (conductors? what are those called anyways...)

My awesome berry salad and Nikki's fruit salad on the train. The train ride on the way there went by so fast and we made it there around 4:30 their time (5:30 our time). It was so weird how the people that were downtown Chicago Friday looked so different than the rest of the weekend!

It was only about a 20 minute walk from the train station to our hotel, the Travelodge. It wasn't fancy but it was spacious and clean and perfect for us! And the window was huge and air conditioning was cold (coffee from the mini coffee pot sucked so bad though!).

After we made some Almond butter sandwiches we got ready, we headed out into the City to do things touristy things.

It was still a bit light when we started exploring but we were just at dusk when we hit the big touristy things and it made for some pretty cool pictures!

This was actually streaming out water and there were people's faces illuminated onto the brick. Like big, creepy, close up faces. So cool at night but when we saw it during the day... not so much.

There were lots of children playing in the water that night like it was a splash pad.

And the bean! Or as they say to make it sound classier, cloud gate. Check out the reflection of the city skyline on it!

Just a classic landmark... we took our pictures and then headed to the bar we were scoping out!

And the buckingham fountain was really close to our hotel. We actually hit it first before the bean, and then although the bean was basically right beside it, we got so lost trying to find it because our GPS was saying we were pretty much there. There was an event with massive tents that was hiding the massive touristy bean!

After our touristy viewing of the fountain and bean, we made our way to three dots and a dash - a hidden hideaway tiki bar that we accessed in a random alleyway with one unmarked door with a man standing in it requesting our ID - everything to make 2 tourist girls feel comfy.

And once we got in from the empty alleyway, we were greeted by a wall full of skulls. We kept going like every reasonable tourist in an unfamiliar questionable environment.

And once we got downstairs, the place was crazy busy! Tables were only by reservation and we had to wait like 15 minutes for our drink from the bar. And stand with our drink pretty much in a walkway. But so worth it...the drinks were awesome and environment like nothing we've been to! Mine was like a pina coloda served in a skull cup and Nikki's was a barrel of rum (and tasted exactly like that)... but the garnishes were so pretty! We just had the one then headed for our hour walk back to our hotel because we were exhausted!

With one last picture of the secret alleyway and random door leading to the busiest bar.

Day 2! We started day 2 with almond butter sandwiches in our hotel, some gross hotel room coffee (even though I tried to dilute it less) and booked a river cruise from our hotel at 1:30pm. Then we hit up Dunkin (for me) Starbucks (for her) for our river walk. We quickly wished it was cold beverages we chose for that 30 degree day!!

We were walking along the river when we came across this awesome tiki bar on the river (where the bartender assured us tiki bars really were not so common in Chicago and this was a coincidence). We got out delicious cocktails and sat by the water in the much needed shade. There was giant jenga, corn hole, shuffleboard, and so many other games to play at this place too!

After our drinks at the tiki bar, we made our way closer to the navy pier where we needed to catch our river cruise and were looking for a lunch joint. We found the perfect one just on the other side of the river! This was Chicago Burger co. and was accommodating to both me with a turkey burger (trying to be healthier but that darn bacon and cheese), and Nikki with a black bean burger. This was exactly what we needed before our boat tour and was quick because it was a place your own order restaurant!

We made it to our river cruise with about 1 minute to spare because timeliness was not our thing this trip and I reserved our spot on the boat while Nikki lined up for our much needed drinks.

This boat tour was amazing! The tour guide was hilarious and the main focus was the architecture of Chicago buildings which is mind blowing. There are so many massive buildings with history and a story.
It was about an hour and a half.

And after the boat tour was our early supper and time to try some Chicago deep dish! Pizzeria uno or due were recommended to me, so we hit the due up.

I don't think I've ever had deep dish pizza like this (we had pizza projekt, but then I remembered that was more like a panzerotti with the crust around all the toppings and sauce on top). This was crust bottom and up the sides, then cheese and veggies and sauce on top. A backwards pizza if you will.

It was good as pizza is but nothing special enough to jump up and down about.

After filling our faces with pizza, we headed back to the hotel but not without first catching some awesome buskering on Michigan Ave! These guys gathered a line of people from the crowd to jump over - I caught him mid air!

Chicago is huge and we found ourselves walking hours a day, so we decided when we got back to the hotel that night to take an uber to the Green door tavern. This is the bar that we chose because there is an old speakeasy from the days of prohibition in the basement (we liked basement bars on this trip).

The massively thick wood door behind us was the door to the the Drifter - the speakeasy from the 1920s. We had to get on the list and return an hour later to get in. Easy enough- we just had a drink in the upstairs tavern while we waited!

And when we got in, we were greeted with the craziest, stressed out bouncer that had to continue to redirect drunk people not on the list out, as well as tarot cards with the drink menu written right on them and were told that there was a show of some sort - burlesque, magic etc every hour. We got burlesque!

We sat at the bar and ordered drinks off the tarot cards, neither of which was delicious and one which was actually drinkable. I could actually still taste the sip I took from her drink the next day...

The walk back to our hotel from this bar afterward was over an hour!

The next day, we planned to take the above ground subway loop around the downtown and then do some shopping. We grabbed some breakfast sandwiches for the subway and for only $3, we got on the above ground subway! We could see it from our hotel room and made it our mission to make sure we got on it.

It was great, but took pretty much 10 minutes to get through "the loop" of downtown. We barely got through our english muffins.

So we made the decision to take the underground to Wrigleyville as recommended by the uber driver the night before. Well we made the decision and caught just one wrong train before having to switch to the right one. When we were on the wrong train and asked a lady for direction, she was way more alarmed than we were to be lost. Definitely not our first time lost on a train.

But we eventually found the underground subway and made it to Wrigley field! We checked out the outside of the stadium, walking around the perimeter.

And were so impressed with these houses that you could actually buy tickets from to check out the game from t he rooftop of their house. Never seen that before!

We walked forever trying to find a good sports bar, and finally came across one after walking over an hour and looping around back toward the subway and Wrigley field. This place has an awesome selection of $3-4 tacos! We were here for so long - I think we had 3 or 4 drinks!

There was a big football game on (that may have been in Chicago... we saw ton of people in their sportswear... baseball, football) when we were there and we had the best time pretending we cared and yelling when everyone else in the bar yelled... because we could.

It was after our drinks at the bar and hitting up the liquor store beside the restaurant when we came out to some guys with slurpees when we had the best idea! Buy some pop and just mix our own beverages for the subway home!

Always choosing the classy places. We were very discreet with our choice in spot to pour our drinks... only the creepy spot under the subway will do!

We got back to our hotel room after taking the subway back and had a full blown dance party in our hotel room. That could have been the end of the night, but then we made the mistake of going to an irish pub that was by our hotel... we needed some food afterall. Why was that a mistake? Well, because by the time we got back to our hotel room it was nearly 4am and our train was 7am. That was the train we slept right through!

So we got up at 8am in a panic then booked it to the train station to make sure we could make the 12:50pm train home (despite feeling horrible!). Thank goodness there were more than one train a day to Detroit and space available! After the longest train ride home (unlike there) where I tried really hard to sleep, we got home around 10pm (and then Nikki had to drive back to Burlington).

We used every second of time in Chicago to tourist intensely. And that city is amazing!