Eager to escape our motel our first stop Friday was to kayak the Chicago river. We had found a deal

Do you ever make a split second decision that might not be the smartest thing to do at that time, but in the end was completely worth it? A decision just like that is what brought me to Chicago a few weeks ago. My best friend Jackie airfare cheap tickets had a family wedding to go to on October 19th in Chicago and I had been debating tagging along for a few months. One day in August airfare cheap tickets I was having a rough day, with a lot of different issues going on that I had no control over. So I walked out to my car on my lunch break, airfare cheap tickets pulled up the Southwest app, and bought a ticket to Chicago before I even left the parking lot to go buy lunch. I didn t really have the money for it at the time but I justified that it was one of those life is short decisions. I had been to the Chicago airport at least 15 times on layovers airfare cheap tickets but never spent a night in the actual city. In true Jackie and Ericka airfare cheap tickets travel fashion we packed the trip so full that we came home completely exhausted. airfare cheap tickets We landed around 6:30pm on Thursday night and didn t have to catch our flight home until after 9pm on Monday. I think I ll split this trip up into 2 or 3 posts since I have some really awesome photos that I d like to share.
Jackie s mom grew up in Chicago airfare cheap tickets so she has a lot of family out there she doesn t see very often. Her mom, dad, and brother who live 3-4 hours away from us also flew in a few hours before us so there was tons of family in town. We had her uncle and brother pick us up from the airport, and after a quick stop at the liquor store to see what kind of Chicago beers we could find, we spent the rest of the night at her aunt s home eating dinner and catching up.
Friday morning we were up bright and early to start exploring the city. I will start by mentioning that since her family and the wedding we were going to was about 25-30 minutes outside of the city we did not stay in the actual city. Hotels were also very expensive even outside of the city, so since we didn t want to spend $225. a night we found a motel for under $100. Whatever you do please do not stay in the Edgebrook Motel. To make it through 4 nights there we had to borrow bedding and towels from Jackie s aunt since the once we had were stained and disgusting and I m still amazed I didn t come home with bed bugs. It was one of those giant neon signs out front, who knows what is going on with all the other people airfare cheap tickets staying there by the hour kind of motels. I ve stayed in some pretty mediocre motels when trying to save some money traveling, but this so far wins as the worst of the worst.
Eager to escape our motel our first stop Friday was to kayak the Chicago river. We had found a deal for Kayak Chicago to do a 3 hour architecture tour and it sounded like the perfect way to see the city for the first time. We had to be there by 10am to sign in and gear up. It was a lot colder than we anticipated it being but luckily they had gloves to paddle with and a skirt we wore over our legs to stop us from getting wet.
Morton Salt Factory! Half the reason I ended up being the Morton Salt girl for Halloween was that I had been debating it when we did this kayaking tour so when our guide told us that our first stop was watching one of the barges unload at the factory it just seemed meant to be!
Overall kayaking the Chicago river was a really fun experience. airfare cheap tickets Dress warm if it s at all cold out because it will get colder out on the water! Also, be prepared for it to be dirty. That water is definitely not the cleanest body of water. We lucked out with a really fun tour guide who was totally happy to answer all of our ridiculous questions. I would definitely recommend this as something to do in Chicago that is a little different from how you d expect to see the city.
This trip was just as much about food as it was about activities. We actually had a bucket list of food that needed to be eaten while we were in town that we started airfare cheap tickets checking off immediately for lunch that day. Stop 1 was to check off deep dish pizza at Lou Malnatis airfare cheap tickets . The deep dish pizza was served on corn bread crust and I really don t think I could ever describe to you how amazing it was in words. The most delicious pizza ever! You can get into heated debates with Chicago natives on the best pizza pretty much everywhere you go but most people I polled airfare cheap tickets ranked this in their top 2 or 3. Even around 3 in the afternoon on a Friday we waited airfare cheap tickets over half an hour for a table so I can imagine that continues to increase as it gets deeper into the weekend.
The next stop on our schedule was to go on a sailboat out in Lake Michigan. We found Tall Ship Windy on Living Social and originally made reservations for the haunted night tour they were doing for Halloween. Since it was an unseasonably cold day they cancelled the night trip and told us we could move our reservation to the earlier sunset cruise. I was sad we had to miss out on the Halloween event but I had never been on a sailboat before so I was excited no matter what to go out and it was an amazing view of the sunset.
The day didn t end here, even if we were exhausted! The next stop was to drive to Tinley Park, IL to go to another Halloween event we had pre-scheduled. I found it online a few weeks prior and we invited Jackie s brother and a family friend to meet us there to join us on a zombie safari hayride at Odyssey Fun Farm . We were all super excited about this after we found out we could shoot zombies with paintballs. They had a few different activities there you could enjoy including a corn maze, zip line, pumpkin throwing, airfare cheap tickets and many more things we didn t really have time to explore. The zombie safari was a lot of fun, however the poor zombies were heavily padded and couldn t move much with 50 people shooting at them at once, so it wasn t much of a challenge. I really hope those zombies are paid well!
After such a long day we had to check off one more item on our food bucket list so it was off to Superdawg. If you ve never had a Chicago hot dog it s a completely new experience. I was introduced to one a few years ago but had never been to Superdawg airfare cheap tickets before. Basically, you start with a typical hot dog on a bun, but then you go ahead and throw an entire pickle, tomatoes, onions, hot peppers, basically you continue to add on ingredients on top of a hot dog until you re no longer sure if there is actually airfare cheap tickets a hot dog in there anymore. That is a Chicago hot dog, and it s amazing.
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