Travel blog: Chicago!

As I announced in my last post: last weekend I went to Chicago! After that it was right back into the daily grind, plus I've been kind of obsessed with the art program Krita to practice my digital painting skills (I'll do a post on that later) so once again blogging has been on the backburner. But now I'm back to tell you about my adventures!

Our plan was to leave early and get there early, but that didn't exactly work out! Not everything went as smoothly so we left late, drove for 9+ hours and arrived in Chicago around 1 am. Luckily we gained an hour from the time difference!

Friday we went to Riot Fest. After waiting in some heavy rainfall which soaked my shoes right from the beginning (luckily I had a spare pair on me) we got on the festival terrain and the sky cleared up! We went straight to Mustard Plug who were a lot of fun. We walked around the grounds, checked out stands, met The Joker (and obviously had to take a picture with him) and picked up some free goodies.

After eating a pulled pork sandwich we headed to the stage No Doubt would be playing later. We were almost all the way at the front. BUT I didn't last there because Flogging Molly was playing there before them. I got squished until I couldn't breathe, muddy shoes got shoved in my face and my hair was getting pulled out. I've been to plenty of heavy concerts before and survived, but this was simply too much. So at some point I squished myself to the back (and I lost my shoes in the mud in the process..). It was kind of a bummer, but at the same time I was glad I could actually enjoy the rest of the show from a distance without worrying about getting kicked in the face.

Gwen looked amazing. She kissed a guy who had a tattoo of her, got a girl who was dressed up as her in the 'Simple Kind of Life' video up on stage and she climbed all the way up during 'I'm just a Girl'. I also loved the videos in the back and acoustic versions of songs.

The next day, while we were still tired and bruised, it was time to explore the city! Again it rained heavily for about an hour, but after that everything cleared up again. First we went to see the famous 'Bean' in Millennium Park and some other sculptures. We visited a comic book store and marveled (no pun intended :P) over the expensive rare comic books.

We also did a little bit of shopping and I got a super cute Betsy Johnson make up pouch for cheap!

Then we hopped in the car again and drove down to Reckless Records, which is really close to where the location of the record store in High Fidelity is! Unfortunately there wasn't much to see there anymore, but I shot a picture anyway :) still had a bit of a fangirl moment!

At the end of this day we were all spent, so we headed back to the hotel and jumped right in the pool and hot tub! Then topped it all off with a delicious pizza and lots of zzZZzzz. Our plans of going out at night completely fell through but it was all good! Before we knew it, it was time to head back home again. We stopped at an outdoor mall for some last minute shopping (got some cute panda and flower earrings!), grabbed some food and then it was back in the car for a 9 hour drive back home.

I kind of wish we could've stayed longer and seen more of the city, but at the same time it felt good to be home. Thank you Chicago! You've been good to us. Maybe 'til next year!