The Windy City

Last weekend, two of my closest girlfriends from college and I headed north to the Windy City of Chicago to visit our friend, Michelle, who is finishing up her plastic surgery residency up there. Michelle has been so sweet to fly home to NC time after time for baby showers and birthdays. We decided it was our turn to go see her.

Thursday night, I drove to Cary to stay with Melissa and Wes so I wouldn't have to drive so early Friday morning. I was excited because I got to hang our with their little man, Lawson, who I haven't seen in several months. What a cutie!

Melissa and I got to Chicago around noon and checked into our hotel, the Essex Inn, which is only 3 blocks from Michelle's place. I got tickled by the sign at the elevator...

After settling in our room, we headed to the train to take us to the heart of Michigan Avenue so we could do some shopping before Michelle met up with us after work. It was gorgeous weather, sunny and 68 degrees, so we ate lunch outside at the Ralph Lauren Grill. We later found out that Oprah is often spotted at the RL Grill. I would have died if I had seen her. It was delicious!

We shopped, met up with Michelle when she got off work, and shopped some more. Then we took the train back to Michelle and Lucien's place. Michelle and I were roommates for most of the time at UNC, and she and Lucien started dating about the time we moved in together, so Lucien is like a brother to me. It was so good to sit around and catch up with everyone.

For dinner that night, they took us to an Ethiopian restaurant. It was very interesting. It was a lot like stir-fry, except they don't use utensils. Instead, you tear off pieces of this spongy, pancaky-type flatbread to pick the food up. It was good and definitely not something I would find in NC.

The girls before dinner.

Saturday morning, we woke up to our friend Carrie arriving in town...and a blizzard! Carrie had to work on Friday, but still came up to hang out on Saturday. The gorgeous weather had disappeared and we were stuck with wet snow and sleet. We braved the elements and made it to the Bongo Room for an awesome breakfast...they had red velvet pancakes! Yum!

Lucien helping Melissa and Carrie through the blizzard. The wind is so bad that the snow is always in your face!

Melissa and Me

After brunch, we headed down the block a ways to the Eleventh Street Diner, a true Jewish deli, for some after-brunch cocktails. Mimosas and bloody Mary's were pretty good!

After drinks, the girls had a relaxing couple of hours with manis and pedis. This time turned out to be not so relaxing, as Carrie realized that she had lost her driver's license and we spent our nail drying time calling all over trying to see if she had left it somewhere. We ended up getting her hubby to scan some documents and send them over email. Before we headed back out into the elements, they wrapped our toes in cling wrap in hopes of saving our pedis as we put our boots back on. Good thing, too, because it worked!

The funny part of the whole trip was that Melissa and Carrie are both still breast-feeding their babies, so had to pump throughout the trip. Before going back to Michelle's, we went back up to the hotel room for the girls to pump. Carrie was still freezing, so threatened to pump with her jacket and "scood" (scarf with a hood) still on. Michelle couldn't get over the fact that three breasts were being pumped at the same time. Hilarious!
After the pumping was done, we headed back to Michelle's to obtain the needed documents and to hang out before dinner. Since there was nothing on, we sat around and chatted while watching Aladdin on the Disney Channel. I hadn't watched that in years! How fun?! It's so interesting to me how when you're with true friends, it doesn't really matter what you're doing as long as you're together.

Saturday night, Michelle took us to a swanky restaurant called Province. It has a modified tapas menu, so we were able to order quite a few dishes to share. It was delicious!
We were sad that the trip was so short, but we had such a great time together again. We got back pretty early on Sunday, and there were lots of mamas that were happy about that.

Tired mamas, happy friends.

I'm so glad we finally made this trip happen since we've only been talking about it for years now. It feels so good to be back with old girlfriends, even if it is for just a quick weekend.