Chicago in 36 Hours

A whirlwind of a weekend vacation! Lots of delicious food & seeing family and friends packed into a tight weekend trip. Here’s what we go up to Friday night – Sunday morning!

Friday Night

We didn’t get a flight until after work hours so arrived at O’hare International Airport for 9PM.

First stop after arriving? Lou Malnati’s!

As many of you know, Chicago is famous for its deep dish pizza, that almost resembles a pie. Of all the deep dish pizza restaurants you can find, Lou Malnati’s is thought of as the original deep dish. And boy was it delicious! Unfortunately, we didn’t arrive until just before the restaurant shut for the night. So we ordered pizza to-go and had a drink at the bar while it cooked (deep dish pizza takes about ~30 minutes to cook!).

We ended up eating the pizza in the hotel!

After pizza, we wanted to head out on the town! So we stopped in Fado Irish pub on Hubbard Ave. for some drinks and to catch up with friends.

Saturday Morning

The next morning we were up to try out a local coffee shop, Ground Up, before heading off to our brunch location!

Brunch was at none other than the Hampton Social!

A very “instagram-y” spot but wow was it delicious. Definitely a good girls’ brunch date place.

Saturday Afternoon

After brunch, we walked off the food with a wander around downtown. We saw the bean, of course, did a lot of window shopping including at Eataly, and visited the Chicago Institute of Art.

We really wanted to eat at Eataly, but I think everyone else had the same idea because the restaurant line was hours long. So we settled for wetting our appetites looking at all the amazing food in Eataly, we walked a block or so away to eat at Quartino’s Italian Restaurant.

Once we were done eating, we just had to sit for a while we were so full. We stumbled back to where we were staying to relax for a bit before trying out Fulton Marketplace.