Run, Eat, Date, Sleep

This past Friday, the 13th, I hopped on an airplane in Baltimore to take me to the “Windy City” for the 2nd annual Healthy Living Summit!

I rose bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 2:30am on Friday morning and made it to the airport in plenty of time to grab a healthy breakfast of strawberries, pita triangles, and brie cheese.

For airport food, it wasn’t bad at all. Surprising, huh?

Unfortunately, the plane ride got the worst of me. I was sick all weekend with allergies, so my equilibrium was off, and therefore, I got severely dizzy on the plane. I was by the window in the last aisle, which meant I was kinda stuck, and I started to panic. Luckily, I was able to breathe deeply, and the dizzy spell disappeared, and I was able to nap the rest of the way there.

I always get excited when I see Lake Michigan from above because I know the flight won’t be much longer.

Welcome to Chicago!!!

I caught the van to the Congress Plaza Hotel, where the weekend’s festivities would be held.

My roommate, Sara, who I had never met IRL (in real life), was also on her way to the hotel. I waited in the lobby and met some other fellow bloggers like Lindsay and Shannon, and Lindsay’s co-worker Annelies. While waiting, I saw Angela was making plans to meet in the lobby at 11am for lunch and photography around the city and was asking if anyone wanted to join. So as soon as Sara arrived, we all made the decision to head out with Angela and some other bloggers.

We walked a few blocks to check out some awesome fountains and “The Bean”!

It wasn’t the coolest day out, and Sara and I had both been up since the very early morning hours and hadn’t had much to eat, so we decided to split off from the crowd with a few others for lunch at Caffe Baci. I had the Milano Pizza, which had arugula, prosciutto, and shaved parmesan.

You can’t go to lunch with a bunch of food bloggers without taking pictures of your food!

Nicole and JT

After scarfing down our lunches, we walked a few quick blocks back to our hotel to check in and catch some zzzzzs before heading out to the OpenSky Cocktail Party! We were all chatting about the stories we had been reading online about the hotel being haunted. I mean, seriously, check out the elevator doors.

Photo courtesy of Melissa

And the hallways are straight out of “The Shining”, dontcha think??

I’ll post more later on all of the haunted happenings

Sara and I took a nap for a few hours and got up in time to get ready for the cocktail party over at LaSalle Power Company.

Sara and I were one of the first ones there. We were each given a free drink ticket, and they served some great heavy apps like spinach dip, a salad with a delicious balsamic dressing, turkey burger sliders, hummus and pita triangles, chicken skewers, shrimp skewers, and veggie and cheese quesadillas.

We had the best time chatting it up with our fellow healthy living bloggers, like Caitlin!

And Meghann

And Melissa

And Leslie

I was super excited to finally meet Danielle, who I’ve been “online friends” with for over 7 years now. We finally got to meet at the party!

The food was delicious and very filling! This was my plate… yeah, the mustard was a bit difficult to get on the sandwich.

It had been a very long night, so we headed out promptly at 9pm when the party was over and went to sleep almost immediately upon returning to our room. The next day would be filled with fun, food, new friends, and lots of information!