Bachelorette weekend in Chicago

Weekend recap: better late than never, right?
This past weekend I was in Chicago celebrating my friend Shannon's bachelorette party! Shannon used to date one of M's friends, and when they broke up a few years ago, we still claimed her as our own. Then, lo and behold, she goes and dates herself a fellow law student (who is taking the bar exam today! WOOF. death.) so obviously they're a favorite couple friend of mine. :)

We had an 11:30 flight Friday which left us a good amount of time in the city on Friday. After some initial travel snafus (like getting on the wrong bus after the train) and being absolutely baffled on how to cross the street to get to our hotel, we arrived! Friday night was pretty low key as we waited for another guest to arrive, played card games, and walked a few blocks for some traditional deep dish pizza (because, CHICAGO. duh.).

Saturday morning we had 2 more guests arriving (after a 6:00 a.m. flight... brutal), then we headed down to brunch.

After brunch, we walked to Michigan Ave., to see the bean (my first time!) and do some shopping.
Naturally this required a beer-break, halfway through.

 

With 8 girls having to get read for dinner and a night out on the town, we had to head back to the hotel pretty early to start getting ready. Actually, we all realized we headed back a bit too early, so most of us napped since we didn't need that much time. (This just means I have to get back to Chicago soon to see more!)

That night we headed to Hub51 for dinner, then to a club called The Underground, where we got a free shot and a free first round of drinks since one of the girls' friend worked there (hollllaaaa!)

 After the Underground, we went to Public House for a few more drinks. I'm not sure if it was the slow day drinking or the walking-all-over-Chicago, but I was pooped and cabbed it back home with 2 other girls at 12:30. We weren't even the first ones to head back, 2 others left about a half hour before us. The last 3 made it back around 3:00 a.m., after a taxi-driver-induced pit stop to McDonald's. #nom.

We grabbed some breakfast and coffee at Starbucks Sunday morning, opened gifts ...since we ran out of time Saturday.. and just hung out until our 3:30 flight. It was a nice, long weekend and I can't wait to get back to Chicago and do some more exploring with M, soon!

I've been slacking on any posts other than weekend recaps, but it's because my weeks start off so... open, and then quickly fill up. For example, as of Sunday I had no plans all week until Saturday, and now tomorrow I have the Twins game with my dad, Thursday I may have a HH/Dinner with some of M's friends, Friday I have date night with M to use a Melting Pot gift card, Saturday we have a wedding (!!... planning my own wedding I get so jazzed for others,.. more so than before- it's my best friend's sister's wedding, and our families have been friends for close to 30 years. The poor girl discovered she had a stress fracture earlier last week and now has to wear a boot down the aisle. It's okay, she's gorgeous, and her dress will cover it anyway. :))

So, that was my long winded way of saying I'm having a kick ass summer and #sorryimnotsorry for partying. Woop!


Totally unrelated, but I rented a 50mm, 1.4f lens from West Photo for the trip this weekend...and OMG I need one of these lenses, like, now. The ONLY downside is the lack of zoom, and I didn't bring my kit lens as a backup, so there were a lot of times when I'd liked to have zoomed out from my location to capture more of a scene and couldn't. Oh well. Here's a gratuitous cat photo to show you the awesome small focal point/blurred effect.

Gosh-darnit, he's sexy.

Got some major ADD towards the end of this post. My bad. Peace out for realsies, now.