HLS Part III: Seeing Chicago

What a great weekend in the great Windy City!  And what better than to have one of the most awesome tour guides around!  I mean, this great blogger is a native!

So first off, thank you Jenn for putting up with me all weekend and showing me around to all the cool places your city has to offer, along with some awesome places to eat!  I couldn’t have asked for a better trip!

I met up with Jenn the morning after the summit and we went to breakfast instead of going and joining a bunch of bloggers for either a 3 or 6 mile run that had been planned.  I mean, I ran 11 yesterday and she ran three and we were going to be walking as much as we could that day anyhow! 

Per suggestion after seeing Mara last night, we hit up Yolk this morning and actually ran into Annelies!  It was nice chatting with her while we sat and waited for our bar seats, and checked out the menu!

 

How cute is this place! I loved the bright blues and yellow and of course the open kitchen!  I find it entertaining to watch what goes on behind the scenes in restaurants!

After looking over their absolutely drool worthy menu I wanted some eggs, but some veggies too.  As much as I wanted some pancakes or french toast, another part of me won over and I lost, but I still did get something that I wanted, just not entirely.

 

I settled on getting the Cajon Shroom Scramble with two pieces of dry rye toast.

 

But there was nothing to my dish compared to Jenn’s dish, called the Tour de France!  It was a medley of three of their different french toasts which included a Lemon Poppyseed topped with Blueberries, Banana Bread topped with Bananas and PB if you wanted, and an Orange Bread topped with Strawberries.

She was kind enough to share a bite of each with me and none of them were a disappointment!  My personal favorite was the banana bread one which had some nice chunks of walnuts in there.  I seriously need to make this at home since I’m always making my berry breads and stuff!  How great would that be!?

Afterwards we walked around and explored Chicago on foot, walking along Michigan Ave, State St., the Chicago River, in the parks and places I can’t remember!

     

Unfortunately it all had to come to an end becuase I had to return to California.  One thing I won’t miss about Chicago: HUMIDITY.  Granted, it was no where as horrible as anywhere in Florida, but I can live without it!

Anyhow, by the time I got he airport I was hot, thirsty and famished so I settled on a simple but filling snack of a Strawberry Smoothie from Starbucks and my packet of MixMyGranola that I got in my swag bag (which btw, I stuffed it in my backpack and probably looked like a hunchback trying to lug it all over the airport! Not complaining though, I loved it!)

I was a bit disappointed with the smoothie because well, it was like cold strawberry milk and I wanted something cold and thicker.  OH well, I couldn’t be choosy in the airport.  The MixMyGranola was alright, I found it a bit sweet in my smoothie but overall crunchy and I liked the raisins in there!  I love dried fruit in my granolas!

I had waited so long to eat that I was still hungry after having the smoothie so I snacked on this packet of popchips (I’ve had them once before in this same flavor, which I found very strong and wonder how just their salted ones taste!?  Who wants to send me samples?!), plus two Chocolate Calciums by Adore that I also got in the swag back. Nice chocolates for something that’s a calcium supplement!

We took off late and the flight was fine, where I snacked on two of the gingersnaps from the swag back, along with some of the pomegranate Quaker Delights we also got as swag.  Do we see a trend here?  I”m simply too cheap to buy myself anything that’s substantial…bahahaha.

And now I’m back at home chilling out until my doctors appointment really early in the morning for a biopsy.  That might be tmi, but it’s the truth and I’m kinda scared.  Normally these things come out as a false positive, but there are some things in my family that might shoot up a red flag, so we’ll see.