We love dates. In fact, we started calling them “adventures” when we were dating based on the characters in Disney’s UP (we even had an adventure book). But to be honest, we aren’t the most adventurous people. Don’t get me wrong, we have many many quirky things we like to do and places we like to adventure, but a few weeks ago we realized that we aren’t very spontaneous. So when Xavier decided to plan a fun weekend for us, I was on board! We decided to go to Chicago and I took Friday off of work. The drive was shorter than I thought it would be and we got to the Shedd Aquarium at 11am on Friday. I like fish, but OH MY WORD this place was cool. I felt like I was somewhere between Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and The Little Mermaid. So much of it was “under the sea” and a really neat perspective.

After the aquarium we headed to Giordano’s for PIZZA. Can I just say that eating real Chicago style deep dish sausage pizza after walking around on a sunny but slightly blustery day was totally perfect… and I also had three slices. Whoops. I don’t even know how I did it. I was kind of proud of myself. Anyway, after the pizza, we walked around downtown some more. There are so many cool parks in Chicago! I had no idea that there would be so much space dedicated to plants and grass in such a big city. It was really fun and I bet it is gorgeous in the summer!

Our hotel was 30 minutes (normal speed) west of Chicago but it was pretty crazy traffic so it took us a little longer than we had planned. We were both super sore and tired from driving and walking but we scampered down to the Cheesecake Factory that just so happened to be right next to our hotel… I call it providence. But I think Xav called it planning. I was really ready to pass out after that but my personal trainer decided that 10pm was the perfect time to go check out the hotel gym. So off we went again! Being the time it was, we had the whole place to ourselves and it was fun to play with the weights and be in a real gym.

Saturday morning we played with the espresso machine in our room, watched cartoons (Tom and Jerry… winning, so much winning) and decided that the in house restaurant breakfast at $22 a person wasn’t worth it. So we went to Taco Bell. Basically the same thing :}

We went to the Brookfield Zoo for the rest of the day and it was so fun to just walk around a zoo together looking at animals and following the map to make sure we saw all of them. I hadn’t been to a big zoo in such a long time and I loved it.

We followed the map to the place where you chase your kids while hoofed animals chase you both.

This polar bear was the most entertaining and adorable bear that I’ve ever seen! We spent half an hour watching him swim and roll around and pace back and forth.

We had such a blast and I am very thankful for the opportunity we had to take a trip like this! Spending time away from homework and our jobs and just hanging out and chatting reminded me so much of when we were dating. I loved it!