Chicago Trip - Day 1

My husband and I went to Chicago last weekend for a friend's wedding/anniversary getaway.  The trip came at the perfect time.  I had had a really rough week leading up to the trip and needed an escape.

***Note: Because I tend to get a little wordy in my blogs, I'm breaking our trip down into day by day posts

DAY 1:
We left at the crack of dawn Friday morning.  We decided to drive to save some money since we had just flown to South Carolina earlier in the month.  The drive really wasn't bad until we got into the Chicago area.  It was then that we discovered the dreaded Chicago highway tolls.  Where we live, tolls aren't really a big deal.  If you drive on I-70, you pull up to the toll booth, take your ticket, then an hour or so later, you pull up to another toll booth...give the cashier a dollar or two and you're done.  Chicago must not believe in the simplicity of this system.  First off, we were unaware that the highway we would be driving on was a toll road.  We were also not aware that in Chicago, you have to stop roughly every quarter mile to pay yet another toll.  Oh, and they don't have people at the booths.  Instead, you have to put change (coins only) into the little bucket.  We pulled up and paid 60 cents to the first one.  Then shortly after, paid another $1.50.  Then we had to pay another shortly after that.  At this point, after looking under the seats and emptying out my purse, we realized we didn't really have any coins left.  We pulled off the highway and both searched our phones' GPS for an alternative route.  In the end, we finally got to our hotel, but needless to say, the whole thing probably added another hour to our trip and quite a few gray hairs to our heads.

By the time we got checked in to our hotel, we had about 20 minutes to freshen up and change before heading to the rehearsal dinner.  We met our friends Chrissy and Ben (the couple getting married) and road over to Hota for a cocktail hour and dinner.  The cocktail hour lasted quite a while and the hubby and I may or may not have had a few too many drinks.  It was a fun evening though, and we ended up crashing pretty hard once we got back to the hotel.