A few weeks ago I flew off to Chicago for my friend Leah’s bachelorette party. I’ve gotten to go to Chicago a couple times in the past few years and think it’s a great city! Last year my boyfriend and I caught the highlights via a hop-on-hop-off bus tour our hotel concierge gave us free tickets for. Yes, I love doing dorky tourist things like that. I’ve even taken a segway tour in my own city. Nerd alert.

DC Girls Reunited

This trip would be a quick one. I had to miss out on the Friday evening festivities as I flew out Saturday morning and got in around 11. You know it’s a quick trip when you already have a reminder email to check-in for your return flight upon landing. Less than 24 hours later I was heading back to airport to fly back to DC, but managed to squeeze in a great time before heading back east.

Leah currently lives in London, but is a former DC-resident. Along with another friend from here, it was great to reunite with Leah and one other former-DC friend. One thing you have to get used to living in this area is a lot of people moving away, but the positive side of that is I now have friends I can visit all over the place! It was also great to meet Leah’s high school and college friends who were all a lot of fun.

We stayed at Hotel 71, an awesome hotel right downtown with a great view of the city. Dinner was at Rockit Bar and Grill’s River-North location, and I ordered some of the best mac ‘n cheese I’ve ever eaten. It was a buffalo chicken mac ‘n cheese – combining two of my favorite meals. After ordering, the waitress said I wouldn’t be disappointed and it was one of the best things on their menu – she was right. Creamy and delicious, it had just the right amount of buffalo flavor to it as well. I’m sure I never want to know the calorie count for this dish, but let’s just say it’s a good thing I’d run 19 miles the night before eating this! The fun continued as a party bus drove us all around Chicago with several stops including a bar in Wrigleyville and outside of the Chicago Science Museum to take some pictures with the water and skyline in the background.

Chicago – view from Hotel 71

It was a great trip and I hope to get back to Chicago again soon. A couple things I’d still like to do there are a Cubs game and one of the architectural boat tours. I also hear they have some big race every year that I might be interested in doing some day!