Whirlwind Weekend: 24 Hours in Chicago

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Colleen Lerro

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!

On The Move

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Colleen Lerro

I’ve been neglecting my blog for far too long, which usually means I’ve been travelling a lot. And, that I have been. Since the beginning of May I’ve been in Orlando, Chicago and Minneapolis, and I also hosted my parents for one of the weekends I was staying in town. My whirlwind of travel looks like it will continue throughout the summer and into the fall with trips already planned to Hoboken/NYC, St. Louis, Boston, Canada, Syracuse, Annapolis, Providence, the Outer Banks, NYC (again), Connecticut and Lake Placid. It’s going to be a busy few months!

The Canada trip is a recent addition. I decided a few weeks ago to try and take advantage of the speed gains I’d seen throughout the April 5ks and take a shot at qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I still plan to go for this at the Marine Corps Marathon in October, but that race is too late to qualify for Boston in 2013. I signed up for a small race called the Niagara Marathon that starts in Niagara on the Lakes and runs along a path by the Niagara River towards the Falls on the Canadian side. It’s a bit quicker than I would have liked, but was the only one I could fit into my busy schedule. I ramped up my mileage pretty quickly and have seen this hurt my pace a little, but am hoping all the miles I put in will be enough to carry me to the finish line in under 3:35 at the end of June!

The Orlando trip that kicked things off was for a work conference. It was my first work trip with the new job and it went pretty well. It was a small conference, so it was good to get some experience at this before our big convention in Boston this June. I did things like work in the media room, attend sessions and write blog posts. If you have any interest in biotech, you can check them out on my company’s blog.

One of my favorite things about work trips is getting to stay in nice hotels. One of the coolest I’ve been to is the W in NYC. For the Orlando conference, I stayed in a Gaylord Resort. I’ve been to the restaurants and conference areas at Gaylord hotels in D.C. and Nashville, but this was my first time staying at one. Unfortunately all of our meals were already set for us so I didn’t get to try out any of the restaurants, but most of their catering was pretty good. Their cheesecake was particularly great, and I think I ate more desserts in a week than I usually do in a year! Good thing for me, their fitness center was also superb. It was by far one of the nicest hotel fitness centers I’ve seen.

They had a great pool area with a section for adults who wanted some peace and quiet with their sun and a more fun-filled area with water slides. I unfortunately didn’t fit in a visit to the pool, but it was nice to look at when I’d sneak outside to warm up during the day. The conference, also held in the convention center of the Gaylord, was absolutely freezing! The rooms on the hotel side, fortunately, were much more comfortable. I had a spacious room with comfy beds and a nice, clean and big bathroom. Check out some pics below!

Traveling

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Colleen Lerro

I’ve been neglecting my blog while I put to the test just how much I like to travel. I went on five trips in November, three by plane, one by bus and one by car, so it was a busy month to say the least.

Twins Game - September 2010

I took advantage of some rewards flights to book a pair of long weekends to Minneapolis where my boyfriend lives. Minneapolis isn’t anything like I’d imagined. My vision came mostly from Marshall’s descriptions of Minnesota on How I Met Your Mother. It’s a very cool, fun city, however I enjoy it a lot more when it’s not cold there! On my trips there, we’ve caught a couple Twins games; toured the Mall of America, including the aquarium inside of the mall; and checked out restaurants in different parts of town. Some of my favorites are The Nook, Psycho Suzi’s and Stella’s.

In between Minneapolis trips, I made it up to Hoboken for the first time to see my brother’s and his girlfriend’s new

NYC Skyline

place, and of course we made it into NYC also. Hoboken is small, but packed with people, restaurants/bars, shops and energy. There is nothing like New York pizza and bagels and we definitely ate well that weekend. My favorite pizza stops were Lombardi’s Pizzeria in NYC and Johnny Pepperoni in Hoboken.

For Thanksgiving I made the drive up to Syracuse. It’s always nice to go back home for a visit, but was especially nice given that the usual winter temps hadn’t set in yet, and we enjoyed 50s and even 60s with no snow the entire time I was home! My ride home was pretty tough, taking 2 and a half hours longer than usual while it rained the entire time, but my parents were waiting at one of our usual restaurant spots and had food and drink ready and waiting for me when I finally arrived. Thanksgiving was filled with some great food. My cousin cooked our turkey this year and did an amazing job, and my Mom made one of my favorites, a peanut butter pie!

Finally, I ended the month with a trip to Tampa for both work and fun. I got the chance to speak on a panel about mobile health at the National Conference of State Legislatures Fall Forum. I shared findings from a recent study on health technology that my company did. It was a really interesting experience, and I’m definitely intrigued by how this topic will affect our lives in the coming years. After the conference I headed over to nearby St. Pete to visit my grandparents. They spend the winters there and I head down every year to visit. It’s always a treat to be taken out to eat, go to the movies and lend my tech expertise. This year was pretty easy – I helped with a Netlix issue and added a bunch of pictures to their digital photo frame.

It was a fun month, and I do still love to travel and see new places, but I have to say I’m happy to be back home and staying put…well, at least for a few weeks.