Happy Monday to all you lovelies! I had the best weekend in Chicago with my favorite girlfriend/co-worker Melody. Our firm has annual training after promotions in St. Charles, so we decided to make a girls trip and come early to Chicago for the weekend! I flew in Saturday morning and left on a 6 a.m. flight from SFO…. which meant I had to wake up at 3:30 AM… #thestrugglewasreal.
I met up with Mel at noon at the airport and we headed to the Silversmith Hotel. If you’re planning a visit to Chicago, I highly recommend this little boutique hotel! It was so cute, in a great location, and everyone who worked there was so sweet/helpful. Here’s some photos of our room:
Isn’t the bathroom to die for?! Loved the way the room was decorated with the pops of pink! After we settled in and freshened up, we headed over to The Bean in Millenium Park – literally just a few blocks from our hotel!
We tried many many times to get a cute photo together in the bean to no avail 😐 After we literally melted in the blistering humidity and heat around Millenium Park, we had worked up an appetite for lunch. We yelped the area and found a tapas restaurant called The Purple Pig – famous for their cured meats, cheeses, and rich dishes. So down. I’ll let these delish pics tell our lunchtime story but it was one of the best meals I’ve had! I would have ordered everything on that menu if I could stomach it 🙂
Pigs Ear with crispy kale, pickled cherry peppers & fried egg
After our bellies were stuffed, we made our way over to the Magnificent Mile for some shopping 😉 It was a pretty long walk and by the end of it, my feet were crying for some TLC haha. They had tons of stores – everything from Nordstrom to Lucky Brand to Henri Bendel. They even had an American Girl store – so much nostalgia! I had an American Girl doll when I was little and 8-year-old me would have gone crazy to see the store in person!
Skirt: Nordstrom | Sidebag: Coach similar here | Wedges: Toms | Sunnies: Tory Burch
Quick note about these wedges. I’ve been looking for some wedges in this timeless style for a while now and never wanted to spend $70 on the TOMS ones. BUT right now they’re actually on a promotional sale at Nordstrom for $40! Such a great deal. I think they’ll take a bit of breaking in to do. After about 6 hours, my feet were definitely not comfortable anymore. But I can tell that they will be great once my feet mold into them. I also LOVE how the wedges no longer have the blue and white TOMS flag on the back of the ankle area! Now it’s just the logo but all black, which I think looks way more sleek and classy. So happy I waited til they changed the design AND were on sale 🙂
After shopping, we decided to head back to the hotel and on our way back we stopped by the lakefront. We wanted to watch the sunset by the water and were delighted to see this:
The sweet lady who had checked us in told us about a fireworks show at 10 pm. While we had originally wanted to go, we were pretty exhausted from our early morning flights and our feet were tired from the miles we had walked throughout the city. Sooooo… we decided to just go back to our hotel and have a little girls night in. While walking back, I took these breathtaking photos of the city at night. They seriously look fake!
Once we got back to our hotel, we thought the perfect girls night in wouldn’t be complete without these goodies 😉 Seriously love nothing more than getting in my jams, pigging out on junk food, and girl-talking all night. Love my Mel! (Can you guess which snacks are mine?! Haha)
In the morning, we slept in before checking out and leaving our bags with the hotel. Seriously so nice to not have to lug around our bags while exploring the rest of the city! We had originally planned to eat that famous Chicago deep dish pizza for dinner the night before, but after lunch we were just sooo full that we felt it was better to wait to eat it for lunch on Sunday. After some yelping, we found that Lou Malnati’s was by far the winner with 2000 reviews and 4/5 stars. We began our stroll through the city yet again..
Red Gingham Shirt: Nordstrom | Cognac Tote: Nordstrom | White shorts: Abercrombie (old) similar here
We walked over to the location in River North only to find a sign on the door that said “Closed for a Company Party, will open again at 4 pm.” Such a bummer considering we had walked 1.5 miles there lol. Without hesitation, we decided to walk to the other location on State Street (which we found out was even closer to our hotel than the River North location #rookiemistake). Once we walked the additional couple miles to get back over there, we saw yet another sign that said “Closed for a Company Party, will open again at 4 pm.” LOL. Definitely did not make that connection that a Company party meant ALL their stores were closed til 4 pm. #evenbiggermistake What a day. At this point, we really thought that it would be best to settle for some Gino’s East or something. But the determined tourists in us decided to get some salads at Cosi by Millenium Park to hold us over and then we would come back a third time at 4 pm to try Lou Malnati’s.
So basically by the time we got to Lou Malnati’s at 4 pm, there were literally 30 people already waiting with us. Luckily I squeezed in and got us one of the first tables once they opened doors. We ordered the Malnati Chicago Classic – with Lou’s lean sausage, some extra cheese and vine-ripened tomato sauce on Buttercrust. And finally… it came out of the oven straight to our table.
Okay the verdict: I didn’t love it. It was too cheesy for me and the sausage (albeit well seasoned and delicious) was literally just a layer of sausage on top of the cheese which I didn’t really enjoy. All the components of the pizza were good – sauce, cheese, crust, meat but they didn’t really “wow” me at all. I think maybe I’m just a thin crust/regular crust pizza kinda girl haha. To be honest, I was more excited about the free chocolate chip cookie pizza (basically a BJ’s pizookie) they gave to us for dessert. The whipped cream. The ice cream. The cookie. Yes yes and yes. 🙂
After the deep dish shenanigans, we went back to our hotel to grab our luggage and headed out to St. Charles.. It was such a great/fun/tiring/but worth it weekend with Mel. She recently moved away from San Francisco so it was great getting to spend time with her just the two of us. Girls trips are the best! I hope you all enjoyed this lengthy and photo-filled recap of my weekend in Chicago! XO