Braxton did an AWESOME job with the proposal. I was completely surprised! I had no clue. He planned a trip to Chicago--we'd been there twice before and loved it--over New Year's and told me it was to celebrate my graduation and to do something we'd talked about doing for a while--going to a city during the holiday season. I've been to Chicago and New York during summer, but always wanted to go during the holidays to see the lights and decorations. So Braxton planned this awesome trip to Chicago for New Year's. I thought it was kind of weird that he planned a trip since usually I'm the one that does the actual planning. I just have a planning personality, and he just likes to travel, so he's happy with most of the things I find to do. So I was a little suspicious at first, wondering why he was planning a trip, but I didn't really give it another thought after the initial surprise.We got to Chicago on December 30, and there was snow on the ground! We were so excited, because we knew it'd be freezing, so we at least wanted some snow! We took the train from the airport to the hotel, which was in an amazing location, one block from the Magnificent Mile. The first thing we did after checking in and getting settled was head to the Field Museum of Natural History. We'd been there before a year and a half earlier, but it's so big, it's hard to see the whole thing in one day. Last time we were there, we didn't go on the upper level at all, so we started there this time. We saw dinosaurs, gems, exhibits on Pacific countries, and more. We were so tired from all the walking. We went downstairs and looked at some new exhibits that weren't there last time we visited. We'd pretty much seen everything that we missed last time, so we decided to leave and get dinner.
This time we were in Chicago, we wanted to try a different famous deep dish pizza place. Last time, we ate Lou Malnati's, which was AMAZING, but we knew that other places were just as popular so we decided to try one of those. We ended up going to Gino's East, which is famous for having writing all over EVERYTHING. Literally, people that visit sign every surface in the building. Even things like pinball machines. It was really cool. And we got there at the perfect time because when we left, there were people waiting outside in the snow to get in. The line was THAT long!
After eating, we walked around the Magnificent Mile in the snow with all the Christmas lights shining. It was cold, but gorgeous! We went to bed early that night because we were exhausted from our 6am flight that morning.
The next morning (December 31!!), we got up and went to the Museum of Science and Industry. We'd never been there, and I'm so glad we went! They had a holiday exhibit of Christmas trees decorated for over 50 different countries. It was awesome. They also have a REAL United 727 plane in the building! You can go in it, and walk around. It's crazy how big the museum is! We saw so many exhibits...a future exhibit, farm exhibit, Navy exhibit, robots, plus lots of cool random stuff. I loved it. After leaving the museum, we went to Macy's on State Street and looked at all the holiday windows. They were really cute. We walked over to Millennium Park and looked at the Bean and ice skating rink. We thought about ice skating, but it was really crowded, plus I'm still scared of ice skating since I got the end of my finger skated over by a little kid in high school! :)
We went to the hotel and warmed up before going to Navy Pier for dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp. It's a really touristy place, but the food is awesome! To waste a few hours before midnight, we watched Avatar in 3D. It was so cool. I loved the movie, and I couldn't remember the last 3D movie I'd seen. After the movie, we went back out on Navy Pier, and we could tell the temperature was starting to drop. We went inside one of the buildings for a little while and got hot chocolate. When it was time to go outside for the midnight fireworks, the wind chill was zero! We were bundled up, but the wind hurt our faces bad!! A couple of minutes before midnight, I saw Braxton start to take off his gloves. I asked him what he was doing because that was insane! He just said he was okay. Then he took off his hood. I thought he was crazy. When the fireworks started going off at midnight, I started taking pictures, not realizing he was trying to propose! When I finally realized what was happening, I couldn't believe it! I think I said, "Are you serious?" like 20 times. Then I couldn't pay attention to the fireworks! The proposal definitely made up for the freezing weather...
The next day, we were so happy. We walked around the Magnificent Mile again and checked out some of the shops, like the Hershey Store and Disney Store. We went in the Hancock Center to see the holiday decorations inside. We ate lunch at Bucca di Beppo, which was really good. It was the coldest day by far, so we went back to the hotel for a little bit to warm up. Then we went up to Lincoln Park Zoo for the holiday lights. They have millions of Christmas lights all throughout the zoo. We looked at animals (by the way, it's a FREE zoo) until the lights came on. It was gorgeous. There was another restaurant we wanted to try, but it was SO cold after it got dark, that we didn't want to walk there, so we just went to eat at a Mexican restaurant by our hotel. I think everything could have went wrong that day, but we still would have been happy because we were so excited!
It was my favorite trip that we've ever been on. I loved it!
No comments:
Post a Comment