Chicago 2012

What's better than $100 RT airfare tickets? Try $43 RT airfare tickets. Spirit Airlines were having this crazy sale for tix from NYC to Chicago for only $5.05 EACH WAY!! With taxes, it was still less than $50/person which, in my opinion, is a steal and I had never been to Chicago so this was a great excuse to do a weekend getaway. 

It was in February, which is a little risky, but we actually lucked out the first day. It was gorgeous out. A cool mid-60s, we took a long walk up to Lincoln Park and visited a very nice/large comic book store,  the aquarium and the Threadless store. I fell in love with Chicago right away. 

We met up with Mark S. and ate at the Publican. Easily 1 of the top 10 meals of my life. Coincidentally, our reservations overlapped with a friend who was visiting her parents so I got to see Kristen for a few minutes, which is funny because we live about a mile away from each other in Brooklyn and never saw each other.

We tried to go to Hot Doug, which Anthony Bourdain visited on an episode of No Reservations. We took a train to the bus an hr just to get to this place... only to find out they were closed the exact dates we were there. So we went back, very sad and defeated. I then felt super sick to my stomach. I unfortunately caught a stomach bug the last day and was sick for about 48hrs. Ugh We had to skip our reservation at Blackbird :( I did manage to try Giordano's Deep Dish pizza, but promptly threw all of that up that night. It was miserable. 

Kind of a terrible ending to what would've been a great vacation. I'll be back.

The Loop

Train Station at night

We got treated to a 4.5 hr dinner at Moto. Once in a lifetime experience. These were "cigars' that you ate.

My #1 reason for wanting to visit Chicago was to take pictures at the Bean.

Tom and Me

Summary of Peru 2009

Well I forgot to write about my 2 week trip to Peru back in May 2009...

It was nothing short of amazing. Flew to Lima (smoggy), stayed a couple of days in a super cute hostel with lots of flowers. Then flew to Cuzco, got the giggles probably from a mix of the coca leaves and the lack of oxygen as we were so high up on a mountain.

We did a 3.5 day Lares trek which was so so cool; I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to hike and camp out to Machu Picchu (and didn't get a booking on the Inca Trail). We had sherpas carry our sleeping bags and ovens... set up all of our tents (incl. the bathroom tent!) and made us 3 course meals every day!
Machu Picchu is definitely an experience you should have at least once in your life. The history behind it is so rich and interesting. The climb up Wayna pichu (which was the larger mountain next to machu  pichu) was an experience in of itself. Tom and I went the "long way"... which meant we were lost and stuck on this damn mountain for nearly 3 hrs. Mind you, the pathways are not for the feint of heart. think super steep stairs/ladders, no barriers to catch your fall, and me being the idiot and carrying a totebag which made things so much harder. I think this was where Tom and I had our first fight, and we had only been dating 3 months at that point.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was great. We ate like royalty because the exchange rate was in our favor.