Touring Chicago

Even though all we wanted to do on Monday was sleep in (and I wanted to do this even more so when I stood up first thing that morning and could hardly walk!), we figured we were only in Chicago once, so we should make the most of our time there.

We had our list of things we wanted to do before we had to leave to catch our flight around 3pm, so we packed up our suitcase, ate some breakfast and then headed out to see the town, hoping walking would get easier the more we did it (which it did...somewhat :)).


After dropping our medals off to get them engraved at the Nike store, we took the CTA down to Wrigley Field, which was fun because Landon has always wanted to go there--too bad the marathon wasn't during baseball season!


Then, we jumped back on the CTA and headed a few blocks over to the Magnificent Mile, where we bought absolutely nothing, but enjoyed looking at all the stores, the beautiful flowers and decorations and the streets the we recognized running down the day before.


The coolest thing that we saw down our walk though was the front wall of the Nike store--they had printed the names of all of the people who had run the marathon the day before and so there was a huge crowd of people finding their names on the board and taking pictures of it--which of course we had to do too!


With only a couple of hours left, we caught our last train and headed back towards our hotel to order another pizza for lunch--it was so good, and so convenient and we figured you can't get it in Houston!--and then went on the tour of Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. It was a very touristy thing to do, which is what we were looking for to finish out our trip. And, the glass boxes at the top were pretty cool--a little freaky if you looked straight down, but definitely cool. I'd totally recommend it if you're in the area!

After Willis Tower, we picked up our pizza and enjoyed one last meal in our hotel lobby before heading to the airport. It was the perfect, relaxing ending to an absolutely perfect trip--I wouldn't change a thing. Seriously.


When we got to the airport though, that's where the drama began. Our Chicago flight was delayed over a hour, causing us to miss our connecting flight in Atlanta, according to the airport people. They told us the best they could do was to fly us to Dallas or Atlanta and have us get a hotel that night and then fly us out in the morning. Well, at that point we figured we'd take our chances and we jumped on our original flight, praying that our connecting flight would be delayed because of the weather also.

It was a stressful flight over to Atlanta, and we were fully prepared to spend the night in the airport--my parents had even gone and gotten Landon a suit from our house and my brother was going to meet us in the airport in the morning so he could head straight to work.

When our flight landed, we were sure we had missed our connection, but took off trying to run to our gate nonetheless, holding on to some hope. Then, after a flight attendant informed us we were running the wrong way to get to our gate, we started running again when we saw that our flight was still boarding. So, still in our coats and with 2 huge bags each (since we thought we were going to be spending the night in Atlanta) we took off running towards B33--which had to have been at least a quarter mile away from us! Landon was ahead of me, but then, about 2 minutes into our run, he hit an incline and totally ate it in the middle of the airport. An old man walking by us stopped and stared, shouting "oh no!" and Landon, recovering quickly, waved me on, shouting "keep running!", which I did, because I didn't think I could start running again if I stopped, haha! And, we REALLY did not want to spend the night in Atlanta!

What seemed like an eternity later, we arrived at our gate and ran to the front of the line, totally oblivious to all the people you know, waiting in line, and, hot and sweaty and out of breath, sank into our seats. Then, we busted out laughing--we were ecstatic to be heading home and knowing we'd be sleeping in our own bed that night!

It was an awesome trip with a memorable ending, that's for sure! It was a weekend to last a lifetime and a memory with my husband that I will forever treasure.