Autumn Chicago trip

Sorry for the lack of posts lately! My life has been go, go, go! Saturday morning, we left for Chicagoland! My favorite big city. We caravanned with Tim and his son, got to Chicago, found the venue we were headed to, walked the streets, ate lunch at Chicago's pizza and it was $10.00 for all 4 of us, and it was incredibly delicious! Great times were had. We walked back to the venue, Beat Kitchen, and watched Ruiner, Crime in Stereo, Polar Bear Club and Strike Anywhere. Great show; really loved that venue and the area. I love Clark and Belmont area in Chicago, definitely my favorite. And this area was only a 2 minute bus ride down Belmont. Maybe if we live in Chicago ever, this is where we'll live. But I'm highly doubting it; we felt like such numbers there. Way, way, way too many people.

We walked around Clark and Belmont for a while. Shopped at Ragstock (my favorite), the army surplus store, walked through the streets and saw there was this street music festival going on. (We later found out Vanilla Ice played!) We ate at Pizza Capri and got so much freaking food. We didn't realize we got a free loaf of bread, when we ordered our garlic parmesan breadloaf. Seriously, we ate like 2 pounds of bread during the day.

The restaurant was a pretty cool setting; in a very cool part of Chicago that I love. Here's Brett waiting for some za (aka; pizza!)

I'm waiting for some cream of potato soup. I could only eat half of the bowl too, because I was literally so stuffed on bread.

After eating and walking around, we hopped on the bus and headed over to Mike's house over on the north side. He rooms with 7 other guys right by North Park College. It was a pretty sweet house and we had a little guest room area in their basement with a pull-out cot. Yes! We decided to take the train down to downtown to walk around and so Mike could show us a sweet spot. Mike is super awesome; and was a great host. And I'm super appreciative of him letting us stay.

It was absolutely freezing. Honestly. It was like 35 degrees, no sunshine, cold, cold wind that was body-piercing. Honestly. I packed outfits so I could plan on updating the fashion aspect of this blog but ended up buried in my leather jacket, cardigan, black jeans, long-sleeve, black hat. It was BRR cold. I don't know how I'm going to handle winter. Well, I guess, technically it is winter right now.

Mike took us down by Shedd Aquarium right by Lake Michigan, where we could see a super sweet view of the Chicago skyline. We stopped to Dunkin Donuts to get some warm drinks, but they didn't help much and we were freezing, so we didn't stay long, but it was awesome. Mike helped me take this picture since he's 10x better at using my camera.

I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked on this trip. On Sunday, we walked around Michigan Avenue shopping. I went to H&M and was so excited to go there, but couldn't find a single thing. I even tried on a couple of things, but was not feeling them at all. We walked right down the street to Forever 21 and I had a huge pile of clothes I tried on, but I was being picky for some reason. I think I have a hard time shopping with Brett because he gets so annoyed. ;) But I got a new dress and some jewelry for GR Fashion Week. I'm definitely looking forward to it next weekend! After shopping, we ate at Rock 'N Roll McDonalds, got our car at Mike's, drove to Congress Theater. Sat up in the balcony while some other bands played, and went downstairs to see Screeching Weasel! It was awesome! Brett and I loved it; especially Brett. There were so many people there, and it was so refreshing, because they were all our age. I get so burnt out going to shows when we're the oldest ones there. I loved it; great Chicago trip. Love to visit that city.