How I spend 32 Hours in Chicago

The last two weeks have been nuts! There is just no other way to say it. It was birthday week, filled with events. Then finally last Sunday, I woke up sick as a dog. I preceded to go to the Taylor Swift concert and sing my little heart out, which only made my sickness even worse. On Monday, I was preparing to head to Chicago for two days for work. We were going to visit 4 new Chick-fil-A's that had opened within the year to see what things they were doing in the marketing department that were working. I arrived at the airport on Tuesday morning (thanks dad!) to meet Bethany, Marketing Director for the Hapeville Dwarf House. We boarded a smooth and quick flight to Chicago's Midway airport. The flight happened to be pretty quick because I was able to get on my laptop and knock out some work and talk to the cute guy next to me who happens to live close by in Georgia.

  

Once we landed, I changed into heels and we hit the ground running. Or driving in a rental car and getting very lost. We headed to the city to check into our hotel and then off to two stores. Our first store was the Wheaton FSU which was fun and nice. The operator was great. He ended up telling us about another store to visit, the Fox Valley FSU and about the best Chicago Deep Dish Pizza place to visit in the city, Lou Malnati's.

After a long day of flying and visiting stores, we headed back towards the hotel. I had a dream of going to Harpo Studios and taking a picture outside. Needless to say, after about 30 minutes of mindless driving around the city because we were so lost, we headed back to the hotel to valet the car and head out on foot! We ended up at Grant Park and took a bunch of pictures. We had no idea we were so close to the water and much more otherwise we would have visited those as well.

We ended up getting even more lost on foot, on our way to dinner. Who knew one road would have 3 levels!! We ended up literally next to the river that runs through the city. At least we walked off the pizza we were about to consume! Finally we found the restaurant and definitely stayed awhile!

The next morning, we walked to the city store, Water Tower Store to visit. It was only .70 miles from our hotel and was a beautiful morning to walk around the city. After that quick visit, we checked out and headed to the Orland Park FSU which had been opened almost the longest out of all the stores. We visited for a bit and found out that the only way to enjoy a Chicago Dog was to go to Portillo's. While the hot dogs weren't bag, I prefer my Kosher All Beef Hotdogs from the grocery store :)

Our visit finally came to an end and we headed straight to the airport! Thank goodness we got there early because it took about an hour just to get through security! No wonder it was $100 cheaper to fly into Midway and not O'Hare!

Note to self: When traveling for work next time, hire a driver and take more than 32 hours to enjoy your visit.