Hello!
We are in LOVE with Chicago!
What a wonderful, beautiful, historic, lively, and fun city.There is so much to do here! We are going to have a lot of fun, I can tell already.
First things first, we almost missed our flight out of Buffalo because there was a long wait at the border crossing.
We were still IN our car driving at 11:25am and our flight left at 12:05!
We crunched on green pepper slices to beat the stress. ;)
It should also be noted that the border officer was highly amused when I told him that I was going to a food blogger conference. He was just tickled pink, he was.
Luckily, we sped through check-in and security check and got there with 5 minutes to spare. Normally we are 2 hours early for flights out of Toronto, so this was a pleasant surprise to get through so quickly.
I packed us a lunch for the flight.
Mine is below (and we shared the veggies):
My lunch contained: A hummus + tomato paste sandwich on Ezekiel bread, chopped veggies, peanut butter, and peanuts.
Mmmm.
CUPCAKE FAIL.
Eric shed a single tear. No, he bawled.
We arrived at our hotel around 1:30pm. It is situated in downtown Chicago right near lakeshore. You couldn’t have a better location. The hotel is very beautiful and historic.
We ate Glo Bars for fuel upon arrival!
Then we met up with Eric’s Irish uncle Charlie! He is the BEST. So nice, so funny, and gosh I can’t get enough of Irish accents. I wish I had one myself.
He has a very exciting career- he does catering for tons of huge events like the OLYMPICS! He is flown all over the world for the events that he caters. I tried to convince him that he needed a vegan planner on his team after he told me what a pain in his butt it is for him to find good vegan recipes. I told him about my blog and he is really excited to check out some recipes.
Eric and I spent the day walking around the city! We always say the best way to get to know a city is to just travel by foot.
Best. carrot. juice. ever.
I surprised Eric by taking him to Epic Burger!
They are an all organic burger shop.
I got the Portobello mushroom burger (without sauce or cheese) and it was delicious.
Eric had the Epic burger and he loved it.
The restaurant has a big flatscreen with Tweetdeck on it, and I saw ‘ohsheglows’ mentioned twice on the screen (middle secton if you look closely) when we walked in. It was so random and funny.
Of course I had to Tweet something.
At the end of the night a bunch of us went to a restaurant bar called the Artist’s Cafe. Eric and I got a beer.
We had a great time getting to know one another.
It was a great day! I’ve got a 7am run planned tomorrow morning so I best get myself to bed. :)
Mmmm, Epic Burger looks good!!!!