Oh the joys of jet lag!

Having gone to bed so early the night before, Matt and I woke up at 4.30am on Sunday morning! Not fun, but being 6 hours behind the UK meant I got to have a bit of a catch up and gossip with home. We tried and failed to go back to sleep, so in the end Matt got up at 6am for a swim! After a couple more hours of snoozing on/off and lazing around, we decided to get up and head out for breakfast.

Christina had recommended Wildberry to us, she explained there would be a bit of a queue but that it was absolutely worth the wait. So we set off into the wet weather, in search of Pancakes and Waffles, taking in all the fun sights and smells of The Theatre District along the way. We eventually found Wildberry due the mass of people and long queue that surrounded it! Is this really what she meant?! We managed to squeeze through the people and found out there was a nearly 2 hour waiting time for a table! Eek! and then we found out why..it was Mothers Day! (Mother’s Day is in March in the UK) We didn’t want to wait that long and so we walked back into the hub bub of the city and found a cute cafe instead. Refuelled and ready to go we made a quick stop at Target (Why is everything so cheap in the US, it’s not fair, I wanted to buy everything!) to get some supplies for our apartment, before heading back to meet up with Christina and Jason.

Originally our plan was to go to a baseball game that afternoon, but as the weather was so miserable and we didn’t fancy sitting out in the rain, the boys decided to stay in and watch the Bulls game instead. And what did us girls do? Shop of course!! Christina took me along Michigan Avenue which is home to the Magnificent Mile and we shopped until we dropped. My favourites included Express and Bath and Body Works (neither of which we have in the UK) Bath and Body Works I have been obsessed with for a long time and always make sure I stock up on soaps and hand sanitizers whenever I’m in the US, they smell incredible and feel so nice on your skin too. I am so gutted they don’t ship to the UK, please open a shop soon!! We also visited a huge Victoria’s Secret which I managed to spend a small fortune in but hey it’s cheaper than the UK so that makes up for it OK 😉 As we were having such a good time catching up and shopping we didn’t even realise the time (it was nearly 6pm!) So we headed back to the apartment, dropped our bags off and picked up the guys and headed to a local bar for a few drinks.

A few hours and cocktails later, my tummy was rumbling and in need of some good food, so we walked to Hard Rock which was at the end of the road. I know some people don’t like chain restaurants but I really love Hard Rock, I love the memorabilia and the good music they play, and I knew that being in the US we would get some good BBQ food too! And I was not disappointed, check out the pulled pork burger below! Excuse the hair though, I had been walking in the wind and rain all day!

Nom Nom Nom.

When Matt and I woke up on Monday morning, we were so hoping for some better weather! I know we are used to it being from the UK but we were on holiday and needed some sunshine! So when I opened the curtains and saw that the weather was even worse than the day before I wasn’t too happy. What could we do today that was inside? We looked online during breakfast and found the Chicago City Pass, it seemed like a good deal and included some of the attractions we had talked about visiting, so we brought 2 passes and jumped into a taxi to The Shedd Aquarium.

We have been to quite a few Aquariums before including London and Sydney but we enjoy them and wanted to see what The Shedd had to offer. Check out some of the animals we found cute, funny, strange:

We did take a looottt of pictures of fish so I don’t want to bore you with all of them!

There are so many different areas to see and explore and all are very interesting. Unfortunately though we didn’t spot the dolphins and we just missed out on the opening of Stingray Touch but everything else more than made up for it!

Included in our City Pass was a ticket to see the 4D experience film. As we are big kids we went for the Ice Age film version rather than the educational one! 😉 but it was still funny whether you’re a kid or an adult, promise! On the way out, we popped into the gift shop, where Matt thought I looked like one of the toy turtles, thoughts? haha.

I would say Matt and I spent around 3 hours at The Shedd Aquarium, but I’m sure if you had kids with you, or wanted to visit all the live talks and shows you could easily spend a whole day there!

It was now around late lunchtime (I swear I always think about food!) and so we headed back into the city to check out The Cheesecake Factory. But not before having a selfie and quick snap with a school bus! (The Magic School Bus, was one of my favourite TV programmes growing up, so I had to take a pic! Our buses aren’t yellow 😦 )

Now where’s that Cheesecake?

Having been to America quite a few times before I had yet to experience a Cheesecake Factory! I know I know, what have I been doing my whole life!? and so I was super excited for my first experience!

Look at all the cheesecakes…..

But first onto the ‘proper’ food. And where to start? The menu had something like 26 pages, crazy. Luckily we had an amazing waiter who knew from the looks on our faces that it was our first time. He explained the portion sizes, asked us what we liked/didn’t like and told us what he did and didn’t recommend, he was super friendly and honest and we liked that. and so what did we go for? A salad and sandwich to share, he told us this was a good choice. So we sat back, relaxed and waited for our food to arrive… and then it landed on our table…OMG good job we got this to share!! Check it out……

I don’t think we had ever seen such a big salad before, but do you know what? The food was soo good and tasty, full of flavour and was definitely hitting a rather large hole! 😉 I did feel a little like Adam Richman though tucking into that salad haha. We tried our best to finish it all, but we HAD to keep room for cheesecake! I don’t think we did too badly though….

So now what to choose for dessert? I LOVE dessert it is my favourite part of the meal, but there was just SO MUCH CHOICE!

In the end we decided on the Oreo Cheesecake to share, it’s making me hungry just looking at it all over again..

Just look how happy I am! It’s as big as my head and sooo delicious! I was tempted to buy another slice to take home for later but my eyes caught up with my belly and I went against it! 😉

Thank you Cheesecake Factory for a delicious lunch and please come to the UK soon!

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the shops, trying to burn off that big lunch! Before meeting up with Jason and Christina at Beercade for evening drinks. If you love Beer and Arcade Games this is your place to go! Luckily they had a large selection of cocktails for me to chose from too! A good, fun evening had by all!

Love, Chloe xx

P.S I want that sign in our house!