Days 3 & 4 Of Our Chicago Adventure

The third day of our Chicago trip was more chill, which was just what we needed. We didn't realize how tired we would be walking around the city so much! We slept in and walked across the street to Everybody’s Coffee for bagel sandwiches and our morning pick-me-up. Then we saw Solo: A Star Wars Story in theaters (I thought it was SO good!) and walked around Milwaukee Ave, which is filled with cute vintage shops, while snacking on Stan’s Donuts. We had to save room of course for our first official Chicago-style deep dish pizza! I can honestly tell you this was the highlight of the trip for Freddy--the moment he had been waiting for! And let me tell you, it was well worth the 40 minute wait for that heavenly pizza to come out. Freddy keeps talking about it even now, saying it's the best pizza he's ever had. We went to Pequod's after some debate about where we should go. Lou Malnati's got mentioned, but they just opened one down the street from us in AZ so we figured we would rather try that at home. (FYI-we tried it and DEFINITELY not as good as Pequod's!!) It's funny, no matter which website you go on, they all claim to have "the best" deep dish pizza, so next time we're in Chicago we'll have to try some of the other places we didn't go to. 

On our last day in the city we made sure we didn’t miss our breakfast reservation at Cochon Volant Brasserie, a French bistro located within the Hyatt hotel in the Loop. It was on that day that I had the best Eggs Benedict of my life, complete with cream cheese and smoked salmon—it was to die for! Their coffee was also delicious, and I got a whole saucer of cream to myself :) After breakfast we headed over to the Lincoln Park Zoo, located in the Lincoln Park district. The whole area surrounding the zoo was so beautiful and there were lots of people enjoying the park with their families. The zoo was free to enter and we got to see so many animals, including a pretty funny encounter with a kangaroo! We intended on seeing more animals, but it started raining so we thought it best to head home and relax before heading to the airport later that day. 

Before heading home though, we did a quick drive-by of Wrigley Field--it was so neat seeing this famous baseball stadium in person! I've always seen pictures of the huge sign that welcomes guests but it was even better up close. All in all, this is one of our favorite vacations to date. Not only was the city so alive and filled with a ton of things to do (& we didn't even get to see everything!), but the friends we got to share our experience with made it that much better. I've told our friends and family that if we had visited Chicago in the winter I probably wouldn't have had the same opinion of the city, but I know that it's a place we'll want to escape to in the summers to come. It also reminded us a lot of Vancouver; very clean with lots of people walking around, but not quite as congested as NYC. We found so many adorable homes in the various neighborhoods we drove through and every time I saw I new one I kept saying, "I want that one!"  or "wait no this one is 10x cuter!". But at the end of the day, I would never be able to brave the winters there, let alone even drive in the city! And after living in LA I never want to have to pay for parking on a daily basis again. 

Chicago definitely gets a 5-star rating in my book! Have you ever been to the city? What were some of your favorite things about it? I'd love to hear in the comments! Our next planned vacation isn't until October...any guesses where we might be going? I'll give you a hint...of all the places I've been, it's the most magical place on earth :) xo