a quick Chicago getaway

We snuck away for a night to Chicago for our anniversary about a month ago and it was so dreamy!! The perfect little getaway! We left our little one, Andrew took off work, I left my laptop at home, and we soaked in the beauty of four years of marriage.

We stayed at the St Jane right by the river and it completely lived up to our expectations! It’s in the old Carbide and Carbon building and is literally matte black, gold, and blush DREAMS. The room was clean and space efficient while giving it a luxurious, restful feeling. As we were leaving, we already talked about going back!

After we checked in and dropped off our bags, we headed out for some coffee and a quick snack. I’m a big fan of finding the best restaurants and coffeeshops and I do research before we go to any city. So going into the trip, I had a long list of places that we might want to go to. Whenever we wanted, we just picked another place, found the address, and walked there. It’s easy and free-flowing and entirely flexible, which is how we prefer to travel for sure!

We made a quick stop at Goddess and the Baker and I would 10/10 recommend! It’s fun and a bit quirky, and the food is delicious. 100% recommend getting the iced honey wildflower latte! soooooo good!

I took zero pictures at dinner, but we had an incredible dinner at The Dearborn. The atmosphere was so unique and fun! Kind of mid-century modern meets upscale meets American west. Very interesting, but it totally flowed and made for a really fun date night! If you go, definitely get the blue crab hushpuppies with your meal!

After dinner, we decided to go for cocktails, and we found the most amazing rooftop bar! London House Rooftop is right on the river and is gorgeous! It was super busy, even on a Thursday night, but it was really really good.

If you go, I cannot recommend the Butterfly Spritz enough! Hands down the best drink i’ve ever had!

It was so nice to wake up without a child asking me to get up. This was only the second time that we had left Alden overnight, and it was so good for us. We woke up pretty early and it made for the most relaxing morning watching the sunrise and then getting ready for breakfast.

We went off our restaurant list and instead went to a place that we had walked by the day before. Le Pain Quotidien was right down the road from our hotel and was truly amazing. It is an organic bakery and cafe, and they had the most delicious breakfast. We would definitely go back again!

We had some plans of what we were going to do, and we ended up throwing all of them out the window and just doing a lot of walking and looking around and enjoying the moment together. We made a few quick stops at Anthropologie, Trader Joes, and the LEGO Store to grab a few things that we can’t get as easily at home! It was calming and restful and we walked away from the weekend feeling like we had done everything we wanted to do and having loved every second of it.

After our little shopping excursion, we stopped for a super quick bite to eat before checking out of our hotel and getting to our train. We found the cutest little pizza shop, Dough Bros Pizzeria and Sub Shop, and the pizza was so good! At $4 for a huge slice and absolutely delicious, this was the best hidden gem in the city that we found for sure.

Overall, it was the absolute best weekend getaway. We walked away rested and happy and feeling like we had been gone for 3 days rather than overnight in the best possible way. We’ve already talked about going back next year for our 5th anniversary! So if you have other favorite places in Chicago, please share them with me!