Girls Trip to Chicago – July
18 – 21, 2012
In July, my Mom, Kaitlyn and
I took a girls-only trip to Chicago! My mom and I have never really taken a
vacation with just the two of us (other than many trips to Dayton when I was a
kid), so I thought this would be a great experience. It took a lot of planning
and research on the internet (we had to get the best deals!), so we were very
excited when it was finally time to go!
Wednesday morning we headed
for our Megabus stop in Toledo…and we waited…and waited…and waited. Our bus was
about 45 minutes late (great way to start our trip, right?), so by the time we
got loaded up, we were an hour behind schedule. I also discovered that the bus
didn’t have the type of seatbelts I had been told it would, which made me a
little nervous about how Kaitlyn was buckled. But, even though it wasn’t ideal,
it all worked out fine in the end, so I suppose that’s what matters…we all got
there safely. Also, those bus drivers don’t mess around! We got to Chicago in
about 4 hours, which included a stop at a rest area for lunch. Overall, I was
happy with our Megabus experience…three roundtrip tickets to Chicago for a
total of $46.50…can’t beat it! Once in Chicago, we quickly hailed a cab and
headed for our hotel (The Red Roof Inn), which was right in the heart of
downtown, less than one block from Michigan Ave./Magnificent Mile. For the low
price we paid, our hotel room was pretty nice, although a bit on the small
side…but we only needed a place to sleep and shower, so it was perfect,
especially since it was in a superb location.
Saturday we woke up, enjoyed
some chocolate donuts (because according to Kaitlyn, that’s what you eat when
you stay in a hotel) and got ready for the day early because this was Day #1 of
our Go Chicago Cards. We walked up Michigan Ave. to the John Hancock
Observatory (the 2nd tallest building in Chicago) and rode the
elevator up to the 95ish floor. Talk about an amazing view! You could see the
top of every building in Chicago (well, other than the Sears/Willis Tower,
which is a tad taller) and many of them had pools on their roofs, which Kaitlyn
excitedly pointed out. We also noticed that some buildings had grass on their
roofs, which I was totally curious about. Come to find out, buildings grow
grass on the roof as a way of providing extra insulation to the building, which
reduces their energy costs, which earns them a tax break. That’s a much smarter
idea than what I thought it was there for…a place for the resident doggies to
crap! Bah! While we were way up high, Kaitlyn also wondered if we were “as high
up as Jesus?” since we were in the clouds…how sweet is my girl?!
Next it was time to walk to
Navy Pier, but it was so hot that we stopped at 7-11 for a Slurpie along the
way…yes, at 10am…don’t judge, we were on vacation! It was a decently far walk
and I’m not sure why we didn’t think to take the bus since we had our bus
passes that day…but anyways, by the time we got there we were nice and sweaty
so we jumped in yet another fountain to cool off. There was this adorable puppy
playing in the water and he would yelp at the fountains to shoot out when they
would quit…we watched him play for a while because he was so stinking cute!
Finally, we headed inside to the Chicago Children’s Museum (yay air
conditioning!) to play. The museum had lots of different areas like a mini-room
that you needed a magnifying glass to see, an outdoors room with a veggie
garden, kids-town with gas pumps, grocery store, a CTA bus, etc. They also had
a water area, which was Kaitlyn’s favorite (now that’s a surprise)! They had
little rain coats for the kids to put on so they could get as wet as possible.
They had pumps that would shoot water up in the air and across the room and a
bucket that you had to lift with one rope and dump with another rope (this was
Kaitlyn’s favorite). It was very fun! Then we headed down to Bubba Gump’s
Shrimp Company for lunch and WOW, it was delicious! My mom and I both had
crab-stuffed-shrimp that was ah-mazing! After lunch we caught a boat for an
architectural tour down the Chicago River. There are so many beautiful
buildings in this city and it was pretty cool to learn a little more about
them. Kaitlyn got a ‘first mate’ pirate-type hat at the end of the boat ride,
so naturally she said “Argh! SHIMMER me timbers!” We then headed down the pier,
took a few photos, got ride tickets and made our way around the rest of the
pier and into…drumroll please…Build A Bear! Kaitlyn’s favorite!!! Before
vacation I promised her we could get a Chicago Build A Bear, so she was pretty
excited about this. After picking up 5 or so different animals, she finally
decided on a pastel, rainbow colored bunny, stuffed him, added TWO hearts and
voila, it was complete! But wait! It needs clothes! LOL. I had my hopes set on
a Chicago t-shirt for the bunny (since this was Kaitlyn’s souvenir) but I
didn’t see any at all. My mom saw a super cute purple shirt with jeans on
clearance (woo!) so we decided on that…and of course, two seconds later we
found the Chicago t-shirts. Dang it! Oh well, Kaitlyn loved the purple outfit
and was already dressing her bunny in it. Then she looks up at the wall and
says “I need those shoes!” LOL…this girl has the shopping gene already! I put
the ka-bosh on the shoes, but Kaitlyn was a happy girl anyways. Armed with her
new bunny (appropriately named “Rainbow Bunny”), we headed next door to a candy
shop, where Kaitlyn thought she’d help herself to a Swedish Fish (ugh, of all
the things??) I caught her just before it went in her mouth though, and made
her put it in our bag. She also picked out the longest gummy worm
ever…seriously, this thing was like 3 feet long! After a delicious dinner
(nacho’s and margarita’s) at Margaritaville, we headed back to the hotel and
passed out in exhaustion.
Friday’s agenda was packed,
so we headed for the Shedd Aquarium bright and early. The building itself was
amazing. It overlooked Lake Michigan and was beautiful. We saw the usual
aquarium fish, as well as some turtles, lizards (Pascal!), jelly fish,
penguins, a sea lion, etc. We also took in the aquatics show and got to see dolphins
and Beluga whales, which were adorable! Lunch at the aquarium was
amazing…probably the best museum-type restaurant I’ve ever been to. They had a
nice selection at reasonable prices and lots of healthy options, even for the
kiddo. After the aquarium, we walked down to the Adler Planetarium. Our walk
there was beautiful, as it was right along the lake and it was a gorgeous day.
We didn’t have much time to spend at the planetarium, so we really only saw the
kids area, which was awesome! Kaitlyn put on a NASA jacket and her space pack
and she was off! They had lots of fun ‘space’ things to try like a space potty,
walking on the moon and a game that let her launch the rocket (which she played
about 20 times). We also got to ‘jump on the moon’ together which was fun for
Mommy, but Kaitlyn was a little too small to do it, but she had fun anyways. I
was excited to get some space ice cream (the freeze-dried kind) and let Kaitlyn
try it. I remember trying it in elementary school and it seemed delicious at
the time…it’s not quite as yummy as I remember, but it was still fun and
Kaitlyn really liked it. We had hoped to head back to the pier to catch another
boat tour, but we probably wouldn’t have made it in time, so we decided to shop
instead. :o) So we hopped on the bus,
where Kaitlyn promptly fell asleep on my leg and drooled all over my white
pants. Super. When it was time to get off the bus, she wasn’t interested in
waking up (we wore this girl out) so I carried my nearly 40 pound 4 year old
down Michigan Ave. to the Disney Store…which was BARELY enough to make her wake
up and check out the Rapunzel goodies. I was THIS close to buying her a
Rapunzel crown/wig thing, thinking she could wear it for Halloween and
dress-up, but she wasn’t too interested in it, so I let it go. However, MOMMY
still dreams about it because it was super adorable…perhaps it’ll be an online
purchase at another time? After Disney, we headed over to the American Girl
Doll store (where I had NO intention of buying a $100 doll) and just looked
around in awe of all the girly cuteness. They had EVERYTHING you could imagine
for a doll in this store…clothes, accessories, a pet boutique, a hair salon for
the dolls, a doll hospital for repairs, even a restaurant where you eat with
your doll…they even had (get this!!) ‘doll holders’ in the restrooms! It was
really quite something! Part of me wishes that Kaitlyn was more into dolls so
she could have better appreciated the ridiculousness of this, but I suppose I
should be thankful she wasn’t begging me to buy her a $100 doll! I actually
wonder if Kaitlyn realized it was a doll STORE, as opposed to a MUSEUM. We also
ventured into the Lego store, which is also something Kaitlyn isn’t really into
yet, but she thought all the Lego creations were pretty neat. There was a giant
Woody from Toy Story and a replica of the Sears/Willis Tower (made from Lego’s)
and she thought that was pretty neat. We headed to dinner and ended up at Jake
Melnic’s (I think)…this was after trying to get into Giordano’s pizza, which
had a 90 minute wait. No thank you…no pizza can be THAT good. Jake Melnic’s was
awesome though…a pub-style place with excellent food. I had the biggest club
sandwich I’ve ever seen, Kaitlyn had a hotdog (yippee) and my Mom had this
amazing pizza-mac-n-cheese stuff…I forget what it was called, but it was
delicious! After a little more shopping, we headed to the hotel for our last
sleep in Chicago.
Saturday, our last day in
Chicago, was a bit of a disaster…not really, but we didn’t get to do everything
we had hoped and nothing seemed to work in our favor on this day. First we
headed to the Sears/Willis Tower (or as Kaitlyn calls it, “the tallest building
EVER!”). It was a bit of a wait to get in, but not too bad. The view were nice,
but I actually liked the John Hancock Observatory views better. We went out on
the Sky Deck (a clear, Plexiglas-like box that hangs over the edge of the
building 103 floors up), which was neat, but there were so many people that it
felt like we had to rush and I didn’t get to take as many fun pictures as I had
hoped. We headed back down and tried to catch a bus to the pier, but there were
some construction detours so we weren’t exactly sure where to catch the bus. We
finally got it figured out and were about a block away from the bus stop when
we saw our bus fly by. Darn it, just missed it! So we waited for the next
one…and waited and waited. Up until this point I thought we had the bus
map/schedule figured out, but apparently things are different on a Saturday. So
we start walking to another bus stop and then the bus we were waiting for pulls
up at a stop light…we were totally the crazy people knocking on the door to be
let in at an un-official stop. Thankfully the driver let us on and we were
finally off to Navy Pier again. Did you know that EVERYONE in Chicago goes to
Navy Pier on a Saturday…EVERYONE. It. Was. Packed. PACKED!!!! So we herded
through the masses to the boat slip and JUST missed the Tall Ship Windy pulling
away…I mean, they just lifted the ropes…I tried to let the pirate-guy let us
just jump from the dock, but he didn’t think that’d be a good idea…something
about the coast guard fining them. Whatever. By this point we were all a little
bummed, grumpy and starving, so we fought our way back inside to go to Bubba
Gump’s for lunch again (that food surely would save the day!) and it was an
hour wait. Hrmph. I had also wanted to eat at Ed Debevic’s (a 50’s style diner
with rude waiters – for fun, of course), but it wasn’t really close to anywhere
we were, so we caught the bus back to our hotel area. We found this quaint
little Italian Bistro and decided to check it out…glad we did because it was
super yummy (lunch to the rescue!) We both had sub-style sandwiches, but they
were really good…and they probably tasted better than they were because we were
STARVING by this point! After debating dessert, we decided we were too stuffed
and headed for the hotel to pick up our luggage. Then we headed for the city
bus stop so it could take us to our Megabus stop…the logistics of this part
worried me a little bit because how would 2.5 people carry 2 backpacks, 2
suitcases, a stroller and a few random bags and purses onto and off of a bus?!
I’m sure it was quite the site, but we made it. We had plenty of time to kill
before our Megabus came, so we stopped in another restaurant (did I mention
that we ATE a LOT on this trip?) for some ice cream…and again, another
fantastic place. They served our ice cream with little cookies…it was super
cute and very much appreciated, especially by the 4 year old! After one final
potty stop (and a little dancing in the bathroom because they were rocking out
in there), we made our way to the bus home (which was on time). The bus home
wasn’t nearly as packed as it was on our trip there, so it was nice to have a
little room to spread out. Kaitlyn fell asleep (about 10 minutes into our ride)
sitting straight up, so I put her bunny by her face and tipped her head over so
she’d have a little pillow. Well, that was a mistake because she wasn’t totally
out yet and that woke her right up. Oopsy. She finally did fall back to sleep
about an hour later…on my lap. :o) I
didn’t mind the extra snuggles one bit though…and honestly, I was depending on
her body heat to keep me from freezing because that bus driver had the A/C
cranked up! Kaitlyn was a tired girl though, and slept a good 2 ish hours. We
finally made it home, where Wayne was waiting when we got there. We almost
forgot to get our luggage off the bus…that would’ve been bad!
All in all, our trip was
wonderful! Other than running out of time and not being able to squeeze
everything in that we wanted, our trip was perfect. Next time I could add
another day or two though. We really enjoyed our mother-daughter-granddaughter
bonding time and I’m sure this will be a trip we remember forever. I am very
lucky to have a mom who is one of my best friends and a daughter who is such a
good traveler! We had so many good laughs, had some awesome food and got to
experience a lot of Chicago together…great memories made!
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