A Whirlwind Trip to the Windy City

When Julie mentioned she would be coming to visit this summer, I asked if she'd like to take a short trip somewhere to explore a little more of our country. I gave her a list of places that she hadn't visited yet within a 10-14 hour travel distance and where I had friends or family connections: Chicago, Nashville, New Orleans, or Colorado Springs. She chose Chicago, invited a friend from high school, and we ventured up for a whirlwind trip to the windy city.

Twenty hours of travel via an overnight double decker bus, 41 hours very touristy hours in Chicago, and of course a ton of pictures!

We spent $29 for round trip bus tickets, $60 on attractions, plus food (Chicago pizza-- YUM!) ... but the experience was of course, priceless! Especially considering that I got to meet up with one of my high school besties. The last time I saw Dana was four years ago and it was for a brief 15 minute visit. She's living the life up in Chicago in the cutest little townhouse and is beginning her doctoral degree this month! 

See those bags under my eyes-- that's what happens after an overnight bus ride that arrived before 7am the day before, non-stop tourism for two days, all while carrying my backpack that held everything I needed for the 4 day trip. Oh, an upcoming midnight departure for our bus ride out of Chicago awaited me just a few hours later. 

I'm quickly becoming too old for this sort of trip, but these are certainly my favorite. Reminds me of my trip to NYC several years ago with my college roomie. Or the time we traveled down to Texas to visit the Dr. Pepper museum. Wait-- who am I kidding. I'll never be too old to travel. I may be tired (still) and have terrible bags under my eyes in photos, but I'll be traveling as long as I'm living! :)

Taste of Chicago

I can't believe I haven't blogged about the yummiest part of our trip to Chicago last weekend yet. We happened to be in the city the same weekend as Taste of Chicago was going on and I'm so glad it happened to work out that way!

So, basically restaurants in the area that are distinct to the city all come to one place for a 10-day annual event. Each place offers a handful of items, their specialty, and you get to walk up and down the area picking and choosing from a kazillion options of all sorts of food. It's a great, albeit overwhelming, place to be when you're starving.

This pic isn't mine, it's from Wiki, but it shows what is was like with the booths and the floods of people.

First, we purchased the tickets. Thanks Uncle Richard for treating us with the "lunch money."

Then, we made our way through the booths determining what we wanted to eat. Each booth had four options of entree sized portions (approx. 8 tickets) and two snack sized portions (4 tickets-ish). It was great way to try a bit of everything.

Deliciousness #1: Seasoned Cheese Fries

Next, Laura picked a BBQ Beef sandwich.

I tried out some Chicago-style pizza--
not bad, not phenomenal

Michelle, our Chicago-native cousin, got some fajitas

Laura got some ice cream for dessert. She did share a bite,
but I was a little scared for my life after I asked.

Michelle took got some cheesecake for desert and lovingly took some home to her hubby!

It was way cool to try lots of different places all in one area, heck all in one meal. Now, it is past my bed time and now I'm starving. I could really go for some of those seasoned cheese fries!

Our MegaBus Experience

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I purchased MegaBus tickets to head up to Chicago and I promised to share how that experience went. With great prices to travel to Columbia, St. Louis, and Chicago from Kansas City I was glad to finally get to chance to travel to Chicago and try it out!

Our tickets ended up being $35 one-way. The price was $20 a piece when I first looked, and I've found tickets as low as $15 each way if you book far enough in advance. I'm just browsing through the site and see that tickets to St. Louis in September are $1 each. How can you beat that?!?

Our bus was scheduled to leave at 8:30pm. The bus ended up arriving at 8:30, but we pulled away only hardly even 10 minutes late. We were able to pack away our larger bags so we didn't have to cram them in the seats with us.

The buses are all double-decker buses and Laura and I had hoped to get the front row up top so we could look out. It didn't work out and we were kind of bummed. We ended up sitting in the first row behind the stairwell, so we got a little extra leg room (about 4 rows back from the front window). I am pretty glad we didn't sit any closer because even from our seats we could hear the millions of bugs hitting the windshield and it was gross. Make note to self-- reserve front row seats for daytime or winter only.

The bus was clean and well-maintained. We learned after we got on, that the buses are equipped with Wi-Fi, so next time I'll plan to bring my laptop. There was a bathroom on the bus and Laura said they didn't have toilet paper. Fortunately, I didn't need to use it.

We stopped once on the way to St. Louis (10ish) and then in St. Louis (1am) to pick up more riders headed up to Chicago. One last stop one the way to Chicago (3:30ish). We arrived in Chicago at 6:20am, which was 30 minutes earlier than the projected arrival time at 6:50. Laura and I headed over to a Panera for some bagels to wait for our cousin to arrive.

Laura in her hoodie and sweatpants (and still cold!) at our stop in the early morning

The experience overall was pretty decent. The bus was freezing (understatement). Every single person was complaining about it and several people even purchased the ugly $22 sweatshirts at the bus stop to keep warm. The driver said something along the lines of "better than not having it at all" and it sort of made me think he didn't really know how to work it. I used my pillow case as a blanket (as best I could!). And then there were these super annoying people behind me who thought it'd be super fabulous to have a get-to-know-you conversation at 4:00am. But other than that, I'd say it was pretty good! And really, you can't really beat the price.

It was super easy to purchase our tickets and way easy to board. Our luggage was unloaded in a matter of minutes. Other people we talked to (or overheard at 4am) mentioned using the bus regularly for a couple of years. Laura is already looking to take another bus up to Chicago and I'd love to schedule a time to go visit my brother- and sister-in-law in St. Louis. On our trip there were several young children (using car seats) so I will would feel comfortable bringing Jackson too!

For the record: I was not asked to give this review, nor did I receive any sort of compensation for this post.

Home Sweet Home

While getting away is always fun, coming home is nice too! My sister and I had a good time visiting with family and shopping in Chicago, but I really missed my boys and so it was so great to come home to this:

They were so happy to see each other and play together

Here's a glimpse at some of our Chicago fun.

The Bean at Memorial Park

The view from underneath

Laura with our little cousins-- they loved her!

On the drive home, we passed the wiener-mobile.

But that's all for tonight! I am super pooped from the weekend. I'll post more on the highlights later this week.

Crossing off the to do list

Like any expectant mother, I continue to nest for my upcoming teenage arrival, but this also means I'm crossing several things off my to-do list as I am nesting. I've been gradually working on her room- adding furniture, rearranging, hanging up shelves, and cleaning out a lot of junk. I've had these shelves lying around along with the stuff that I've put on them. I fully expect her to redecorate and add her own pictures, but I just didn't want them to be empty when she first walked in! I went to Michael's to buy the supplies to decoupage the letters in Julie's name, but they didn't have the kind that I used with Jackson's and the ones they had were pretty expensive. I may have to improvise.

And much to the annoyance of my husband, "Why are you taking so many pictures?", I am getting several pictures to use for my photobook. Of course this means having my camera with me at all times and taking several pictures a day.... Somebody's gotta do it! I still haven't decided how I am going to print the book, but I've limited my options and I know for sure that I will cover whatever type of book I get with contact paper. That's a start, right?

Jackson and Daddy playing with Bubbles

Drawing pictures with chalk

Piggy-back rides!

Look at my handsome men!

In other news, I just bought MegaBus tickets for my sister and I to go up to Chicago next weekend. I've heard about it through several venues so I'm interested in giving it a shot. I don't think $35 to Chicago from Kansas City is all that bad of a price, even though tickets were only $20 when I looked a few weeks ago. That's what I get for being lazy! Oh well. Sometimes you can get tickets for as low as $1 to different places. I am anxious to see if it's a decent trip so I can plan to do it more often! I will definitely keep you posted!