Traveling with kids keeps getting easier and easier as they get older. We still haven’t gone anywhere with the girls that requires flying, but we have done pretty long car rides, and they do great at this point. We wanted to take a vacation just with our family of five this summer to somewhere we could drive to, and we ended up deciding on Chicago. In such a big city, we knew there would be plenty to keep us busy for a few days. Here’s the recap of our trip from July 8th-13th:
7/8/24 (Monday) – We got an early start this morning and left the house by about 5:50 am to drive to Chicago. We were all excited to explore a new city together. I was a little nervous to be going to such a big city and wondering how we would do with walking everywhere, trying to figure out public transportation, or trying to drive. I was also nervous because we ended up booking a hotel stay in downtown Chicago rather than doing an Airbnb like we normally do. It turned out that going with a hotel was going to save us a lot of money and it would be more centrally located to most of the activities we were looking to do. The drive went very smoothly, and we didn’t run into too much traffic for most of the day. We stopped at CFA for lunch right after we crossed into Indiana from Kentucky.
It was really neat to see all of the wind turbines along I-65 as we were driving through northern Indiana. They are humongous! We ran into a little bit of rain, but otherwise it was a really nice day and a nice drive.
We made it into Chicago around 5 pm, but it took a while longer to actually make it to our hotel because of all the red lights and traffic. It was crazy to see how tall the buildings are and how many there are! Our hotel was a Hampton Inn on W Illinois Street. We pulled up to the front and were able to unload all of our stuff before Travis moved the car to a nearby parking garage. The girls were super excited about the elevators and taking turns pushing the buttons. Our room was on the 11th floor of 12 floors. We booked a king suite with a separate bedroom and a living area with a foldout couch. We also packed a twin air mattress, and the living area was surprisingly spacious. Although not our ideal type of stay, this was about the best we could ask for in a hotel room. We got all of our stuff up to our room and looked around for a few minutes and then walked to Jimmy John’s for supper. We just wanted to get something quick and easy so we would have time to get settled before bed. Everyone was tired because we woke up so early this morning. Walking to Jimmy John’s wasn’t too far, and it was our first taste of the city outside of the car ride. We all went to bed early in preparation for a fun day ahead of us!
7/9/24 (Tuesday) – This morning, the weather was looking iffy because of the remnants of Hurricane Beryl on the way. We decided to make a 9 AM reservation at 360 Chicago (formerly known as the John Hancock building) as our first activity of the day, so we got up and got ready in time to eat breakfast around 7:30. The girls were delighted to find a waffle bar at breakfast, including chocolate waffle batter, chocolate chips, and whipped cream 😉 We immediately knew what they would be eating all week for breakfast.
We packed our backpacks and left the hotel around 8:30 to head to 360 Chicago. It was about a mile walk from our hotel. We got there a few minutes after 9 am (when they opened), and it was the best decision to get there for an early reservation in the day! It wasn’t crowded at all, and we didn’t have to wait in line. (I’d read that the lines could get super long later in the day)…
The weather and views were amazing! We rode an elevator up to the 94th floor in 40 seconds! Once at the top, the views were incredible. Abigail was nervous being that high up and didn’t want to stay too long. Brooklyn enjoyed it but said it made her stomach hurt 😉 Savannah was the only one with no complaints. Travis and I both thought it was really neat. None of us were brave enough to try TILT (a “ride” that allows you to lean out over the side of the building in a glass box), but just being up on the 94th floor was cool enough. It was our first good view of Lake Michigan, and we were able to pick out some other sights that I’d been reading about online. It was a lot of fun! The girls picked out a few postcards at the gift shop, and then we headed back down to the ground level.
The girls loved the escalators and revolving doors at this building as well as all others we saw this week. It’s the little things 😉
I had seen ahead of time that the American Girl store was right by 360 Chicago, so we walked over there next. The AG store in Chicago is the original one, and it is 2 stories tall! It definitely has a lot more to it than the Nashville location we had been to before. Savannah brought her doll, Grace, and Abigail brought Mary Ellen. Brooklyn left Julie at home, but I think she wished she’d brought her along after we got there. They enjoyed browsing and picking out items for future wish lists. Savannah also had some gift cards to spend, so she bought a few outfits for her dolls.
Abigail really wanted to get Mary Ellen’s hair done, so we did that at the doll salon. She picked out a “unicorn pony” hairstyle and loved how it turned out! She said she never wanted to take it out after Mary Ellen’s hair was done 😊
We started walking back toward the direction of our hotel after that because we thought it might start raining soon…
We stopped at Billy Goat Tavern for lunch (the original location), which Travis had read about online. It was full of history and character. The menu was simple, but the burgers were good. Not the best I’d ever had, but worth trying just to see what the restaurant was all about and why it was so famous.
We walked back to the hotel after that to rest for a few minutes. Savannah tried all of the new AG outfits she’d bought on Grace, and Travis and I took care of an issue with a dental bill at the girls’ dentist that we’d been trying to resolve for 7+ months.
Afterward, it still wasn’t raining yet, so we decided to walk to the Navy Pier to do something I’d read about called Flyover. It was similar to a ride at Epcot called Soarin’, but this ride makes you feel like you are flying over the city of Chicago. We made reservations for 2:15 pm. This was about another mile walk to get to. Our legs were definitely worn out today! Flyover was really neat! The girls were nervous leading up to it, but I was surprised at how much Abigail loved it! She wanted to do it a second time after we finished. The other girls really enjoyed it too (except for the fireworks at the end…). It was pretty intense at times, especially when it seems like you are about to crash into the skyscrapers 😉 But it was a neat and different way to “tour” the city!
After that, we walked to the end of the Navy Pier. It is 3300 feet long, so it takes a while to get to the end. The view of the lake and the city behind us were really beautiful. It was starting to sprinkle at this point but not raining too hard. We decided to grab some dessert before walking back to the hotel. The girls were super tired and everyone’s legs were exhausted at this point. We found an ice cream shop inside called Kilwins. It wasn’t cheap, but hit the spot and gave us a little boost to make it the rest of the way to the hotel.
We definitely needed our umbrellas on the way back. It wasn’t monsooning, but definitely a steady rain.
We were so tired when we got back to the hotel that the girls and I decided to just have PB&J sandwiches for supper so we wouldn’t have to walk anywhere else 😉 Travis walked a block or two to grab sushi and bring it back to the room. He gave all of us foot rubs for our tired feet after that, and the girls watched a movie. It was a good day! I think we probably walked 5 or 6 miles altogether. We were looking forward to a good night’s sleep!
7/10/24 (Wednesday) – It was still raining when we woke up this morning, so this was a slower morning of waking up, getting ready, and going down for breakfast in the hotel. The girls were excited that the hotel had an indoor pool and had been asking to swim at some point, so we decided that this morning would be a good time to do that. We got ready and made it down to the pool a few minutes before 10 am, and the girls swam for about an hour. Travis swam and played “fish fry” with them for a little while before he got out to dry off. It was a small pool, and they said it was so warm it felt like bath water 😉 The girls had fun! It was empty when we got there, and only one other family came while we were there. Around 11 am, we went back up to the room to get showers and get ready for lunch and an afternoon of exploring…
We knew we wanted to a try a Chicago-style hot dog while we were in town, so we decided to walk to Portillo’s for lunch, a few blocks away from our hotel. We learned on this trip that one thing you DON’T do in Chicago is ask for ketchup on your hotdog 😉 Travis and I both tried a Chicago dog, which has mustard, relish, celery salt, freshly chopped onions, tomatoes, kosher pickles, and peppers on a steamed poppyseed bun. I am not always the most adventurous eater, but it was actually good! I’m glad I tried it. Travis really liked it too. The girls got plain hot dogs and/or chicken fingers, and they liked their meals too…although Savannah wasn’t crazy about the poppyseeds in her bun. We had heard great things about their milkshakes, so we decided to try two flavors and share them. It’s a good thing we didn’t order more than two because their “small” milkshakes were huge! We tried the chocolate cake shake and the strawberry lemon cake shake. They both had actual pieces of their homemade cake blended up in the shakes. They were delicious and so big that we barely finished them among the 5 of us. Would definitely recommend, especially the strawberry lemon flavor.
We waddled out of the restaurant and walked a little over a mile to see the Cloudgate sculpture (nicknamed the “Bean”) in Millennium Park. It’s a good thing we did so much walking this week because we definitely ate our way through Chicago! On the way, we crossed a bridge over the Chicago River for the first time, at least on foot. It was neat to see!
The Bean is one of the most iconic things in Chicago, so I wanted to see it in person while we were here this week. It was really impressive to see it in person and see our reflections in it. I didn’t realize that you could actually walk underneath it too. The area around the Bean had been fenced off for construction from August 2023 until just a couple of weeks before our trip, so we really got lucky that we could get right up close to it while we were there! It turned into a beautiful sunny afternoon after the morning rain, and the temp felt really good outside. I had been reading some comments online about how Chicagoans felt like this was an especially humid summer for them, but we felt like it was a reprieve from the heat and humidity we are used to. They don’t know what real humidity is…haha.
After admiring the Bean and taking a few pictures, we kept walking toward nearby Maggie Daly park. I’d read good things about it online. It apparently has a paved “ribbon” for scootering/roller skating in warm weather, and they turn it into an ice skating ribbon in the winter. We didn’t go to that area of the park, but we checked out some of the many playground areas. The girls enjoyed exploring and getting to just play for a little while, although we were getting pretty tired by this point from all the walking.
We made a quick stop by a bathroom and started leaving the park, and I realized after a minute or two that I’d left my cell phone at the last playground area we were at. I got it out of my backpack and left it on the bench I was sitting on and just didn’t see it when we got up to leave. I was panicking mostly because of the thousands of pictures and videos on my phone and afraid that someone would have taken it by the time we got back to where it was. It was probably sitting there for a good 10 minutes before we got back to it, and thankfully it was still there sitting all by itself. I was SO thankful (and kicking myself at the same time for leaving it)!!
We then left the park a second time…haha…and started walking back in the general direction of our hotel. Abigail was so tired by this point that Travis had to carry her for a little while ;)
We decided to walk back a different way and went by the Crown Fountain to see it on our way. I’d heard it was a fun thing for kids to play at, but didn’t realize how neat it would be until we got there. It was two towers with screens that showed faces of Chicago residents. The faces changed every few seconds and made different expressions. Every couple of minutes, the people on the screen would start “spitting” and water would come shooting out of their mouths through a hole. It’s hard to describe, but the kids thought it was so fun. There were a ton of kids there, and they loved getting splashed and running under the water. This turned out to be one of Brooklyn’s favorite activities of the whole week, and the other girls really enjoyed it too.
We left after 15 or 20 minutes so that we could walk back to the hotel and get ready to eat an early dinner, but wished we could have stayed longer!
We decided to try deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati’s because it was pretty close to our hotel–to minimize walking. I’d read and heard good things about it online before our trip as well. We definitely beat the crowd because it got busier the longer we were there. Deep dish pizza takes about 30 minutes to bake, so we had a bit of a wait after we ordered. We decided to just order one large pizza since none of us were super hungry. It was delicious! Travis especially liked the flaky crust…it was definitely different than any pizza we’ve ever had. The girls and I could only eat one piece each because it was so big! We walked back to the hotel after that and I was able to zoom into my bible class at KSR while Travis reviewed some bible stories with the girls. It was a good day! I felt super thankful the rest of the day to still have my cell phone with all of my pictures and videos!
7/11/24 (Thursday) – We picked today to go to the Brookfield Zoo because the weather was supposed to be good. But first, waffles ;) The girls were very excited! This was our only day to use the car all week other than driving to and from Chicago. We could have taken the train to Brookfield, but decided it would be faster and easier to drive our own car. Our goal was to get to the zoo around the time it opened at 9:30 am, but before that, we wanted to stop by Travis’s grandpa’s childhood home in Brookfield just to see it from the outside. We had gotten the address from Cici, and it was only a mile or two from the zoo. It was neat to see the house in person and imagine Grandpa Dvorak living there as a young boy.
We got to the Brookfield Zoo a few minutes after 9:30 and decided to buy a basic family membership rather than single day tickets because it actually worked out to be the same cost or less once we bought tickets to the butterfly house later that morning. We were excited to see what this zoo had to offer compared to others we’d been to before.
We’ve learned our lesson after visiting several zoos with the kids, and we know to visit the big cats and polar bears ASAP in the morning before it gets too hot. So this trip, we headed to see the big cats first. The leopard and one of the lions were both up and active. The lions had big beautiful manes! The tiger was asleep, but we saw him awake a little later in the morning.
We saw seals, sea lions, a bald eagle, and a grizzly bear (among other animals) on our way to see the polar bears…
Savannah was excited that this zoo had TWO polar bears, Hope and Hudson. We got to see both today, and they were both up and awake. One was pacing back and forth, which made us wonder if he or she was waiting to be fed.
The Brookfield Zoo had lots of baby animals, including a baby giraffe! We all thought the camels were interesting to look at with their humps.
Brooklyn had been asking to go to the butterfly house at the Navy Pier, so we decided instead to buy tickets to the butterfly house at the zoo. Our tickets were 50% off with our membership, so they were only $1.50 or $2 each. Not long after we got inside, a butterfly landed on Savannah’s head! We were a little nervous about how Abigail would do because last time she went inside a butterfly house, she cried. She doesn’t like bugs or things flying around her, but she did great this time! We saw so many beautiful butterflies and flowers. Brooklyn really enjoyed it, and so did the rest of us. Even Abigail enjoyed it.
This zoo had some animals we’d never seen before (that I can remember), including wallabies!
One unexpected favorite thing from the day was the parakeet room. Their colors were absolutely gorgeous (pictures don’t do it justice!), and it was so fun to watch them fly around and eat birdseed from the sticks that people were holding out. The sticks were $2 each, but someone gave us theirs as they were leaving the room. The girls loved holding it out for the hungry parakeets to eat from. I am glad we stopped by this exhibit!
Abigail had been waiting patiently all day to see the koalas, which had only been at the Brookfield Zoo for a couple of weeks. She had recently declared koalas to be her favorite animal, and she couldn’t wait to see them. We actually had to wait in line to go inside the building where the koalas were because it was such a popular exhibit. Unfortunately both koalas were asleep in a tree, so we couldn’t see their faces, but we can now at least say we’ve seen a koala in person. Maybe next time we’ll see one awake!
Another favorite thing from the day was the dolphin show! Abigail decided after the show that she wants to be a dolphin trainer and asked if we would come watch her in the shows. I told her of course we would :)
We happened to catch the tiger taking a bath after that…yay!
Brooklyn and Savannah loved the sand cat and wanted to hang around and watch it for a while. Other than the big ears, he or she looked a lot like a pet cat.
Snow cones hit the spot for an afternoon treat! It was cloudy all morning and actually rained just a bit while we stopped to eat lunch, but then the sun came out for the afternoon.
We ended the day by seeing the gorillas and monkeys (Travis’s favorite!) and the penguins. We didn’t see everything, but we gave it our best shot. Of course, we had to stop by the gift shop on the way out 😉 We stayed until about 5:30 (the zoo closed at 6), so it was a long day with a lot of walking. We were all tired and hungry by that point!
The traffic wasn’t too bad driving back. We got parked in the same parking garage and then walked to a restaurant called XOCO that serves Mexican street food. They didn’t have any tables available, so we ordered food to-go, and Travis stayed to wait on it to be ready. I took the girls back to the hotel to get showers and PJs on while we waited for the food. The restaurant was only a block away or two away from our hotel. We got back to the hotel lobby and waited on the elevator. When the elevator door opened, I was busy looking at my phone to open the Hilton app to use the digital key so we could hit the button on the elevator to take us to the 11th floor. As the door closed behind us, Savannah said, “Where’s Abigail??” I looked up and realized she hadn’t gotten on the elevator with us, but it was too late to open the door back. I tried not to panic as the elevator went all the way up to the 11th floor, and then we could finally hit the down button to go back to the lobby. (If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have tried to hit 2 or 3 and get off so we could get back down faster). It seemed like an eternity before we got back to the lobby. All I could picture was Abigail crying because she had gotten left behind (or worse). When the elevator door opened on the 1st floor, there were two guys standing there who said, “She’s over there!” and pointed toward the hotel desk. They had apparently seen her crying by herself at the elevator and sent her over to the hotel desk to stand with one of the employees. Brooklyn, Savannah, and I rushed over to the desk, and Abigail and I both immediately started to cry. Whew! I think it didn’t help that I was so tired and hungry. I was so thankful for the two men who made sure she went to go stand with the hotel employee while she waited on us to come back down. The employee was so sweet and gave us a whole box of tissues and several bottled waters…haha. I felt shaken up about it the rest of the evening….mostly just upset with myself for not realizing she wasn’t with us on the elevator before it closed. I’m just thankful she was okay!! When Travis got back to the room with the food a little while later, we had a story to tell him…haha. Between (temporarily) losing my phone and my kid this week, I was having a hard time! Thankfully the rest of the week went smoothly other than those two things!! Our food was delicious…the ingredients were fresh and even the corn tortillas were homemade. Yum!
We ended the evening on a fun note playing Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza!
7/12/24 (Friday) – Our last full day in Chicago! We booked an architectural boat tour with Wendella as our first activity of the morning at 9:30 am. Our hotel was located only a couple of blocks from the river, so it was a short walk to the dock after breakfast…
It was a nice sunny morning. We got there a few minutes early to get in line and we were able to get seats on the top of the boat for a better view. We had done a boat tour in St. Louis, but this was way better in terms of the views, narration, and all the information we got about the city and the buildings we passed. It wasn’t the girls favorite activity of the week, but Travis and I really enjoyed it, and we learned a lot. Our tour guide not only gave us info about the buildings along the river, but also tons of facts about Chicago and the history of the city. It was very informative and interesting. We opted for the 90 minute river tour instead of doing the river and lake tour. I thought it might have been interesting to go through the lock out onto Lake Michigan, but Travis pointed out that when we walked out to the end of the Navy Pier earlier in the week, we already got to see the city from the lake like we would if we were out on a boat. So that’s the main reason we opted to just do the river tour instead. The architecture in Chicago is just beautiful, and it was so neat to see it from the river!
After the boat tour, we walked back down Michigan Avenue, admiring all of the beautiful planter boxes that we passed along the way. We felt like the city did a good job of trying to bring some greenery to the city since there was hardly any grass to speak of.
We headed to eat at a 50s diner called Ed Debevic’s that Travis had heard of. We didn’t know what to really expect until we walked in, but the servers are intentionally sassy and rude and if you play along, it makes it even more fun. Our waitress took Abigail’s sunglasses off the table and started wearing them around. She “rudely” rushed us to hurry up with our orders and ragged on us for choosing water for our kids instead of fun drinks like a milkshake…haha. The servers even danced to “Workin’ at the Carwash” during the middle of our meal. Once the girls understood what was going on with the “rude service”, they thought it was a hoot and kept a close eye on our waitress anytime she passed by. Our waitress folded our receipt into a paper airplane and flew it to our table. It was a lot of fun, and the food was good too!
As if we needed anything else to eat, we stopped by Stan’s Donuts afterward to let the girls pick out a donut. Abigail picked out a huge one and ate the whole thing! I tried little bites of each one, and they were all really good.
After we left Stan’s, we went back to the hotel to get changed and then we walked to the Ohio Street Beach near the Navy Pier to dip our toes in the lake. It was about a mile from our hotel. We felt a little funny walking down the busy streets of Chicago wearing our swim stuff and carrying towels and beach stuff, but oh well 😉 We got to the beach around 2 pm, and it was fairly crowded but not so much that we couldn’t find a spot to put our stuff down. The girls wanted to head straight to the water after we got sunscreen on. I had warned them that the water would likely be cold (the internet said 70 degrees), but it actually didn’t feel as cold as I was expecting. There were plenty of people in the water and lots of yachts floating not too far off shore. It was so crazy to be at the beach but have the view of the city skyscrapers so close by. The girls all swam and completely went under and had a blast. They kept accidentally calling it the ocean because Lake Michigan is so big that you can’t see the other side. There were small gentle waves right at the shore, but otherwise the water was very calm and clear. It seemed very clean too! The girls had fun digging a big hole, and Abigail made a friend named Lucy who was close to her age and visiting from Ohio. We enjoyed our time there and it felt great! It wasn’t nearly as hot or humid as we are used to at the beach.
We stayed until about 3:30 and then walked over to a nearby splash pad to rinse the sand off our legs before walking back to the hotel 😉 We got showers and then headed to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Pizzeria Portofino. It was definitely fancier than we were expecting (not the best place to take kids), but the food was really good and it was neat to eat right by the river. We spent the rest of the evening getting things packed up and playing cards before bed. It was a fantastic trip!
7/13/24 (Saturday) – Breakfast didn’t start until 7 am at the hotel, so we were a little later getting on the road today than on Monday. We couldn’t miss one more day of chocolate waffles though 😉 We got breakfast and got all of our stuff down to the lobby and Travis went to get the van and pull it around in front of the hotel so we could load up. We left Chicago going a slightly different way than we came in, which gave us a view of the lake that we hadn’t seen yet. We really enjoyed our time in Chicago and would definitely visit again! We felt safe, and there was so much to do that we could have spent another week there at least. None of the girls were ready to leave either! As we were driving out of the city, Abigail exclaimed, “Bye Chicago! Hope you enjoyed us!” :) We had a smooth drive on the way home and didn’t run into too much traffic other than around Nashville. We ate lunch at CFA again (this time in Indianapolis) and made it home by about 7:30 pm. It felt good to be home, but we were thankful to have made these memories together!
