Chicago Recap

It has been WAY too long since I did a travel post, I guess mostly because it's been too long since I traveled??  Anyhow, I'm making up for it this week because I bounced from St. Louis to Chicago to Salt Lake City.  
Last week, my mom and I went to Chicago for about 20 hours because she got Queen + Adam Lambert concert tickets for her birthday and invited me to join.  
We packed a lot in our 20 hours!  We opted to take the train from St. Louis to Chicago, because it's super cheap (we paid about $100 for both of us round-trip) and incredibly convenient- it's way more spacious than an airplane and has outlets and free wifi.  This enabled me to get work done on the way there, and using less PTO is always a plus.  Once we arrived, we hit the ground running.
On the walk to our hotel from Union Station, we went a little out of the way to stop by Galata, a Turkish restaurant, for lunch because we both absolutely love Turkish food, and there's not many good Turkish options in STL.   We found the restaurant on Yelp, which is my go-to app for finding good restaurants while traveling (or really in my own city...).
We shared an order of red lentil soup and each got a wrap, which I neglected to photograph.  If you do ever stop by, their chicken kebab is amazing.  
We then caught an Uber to our hotel, because it was hot.  We stayed at Hotel Chicago in the Medical District.  It was the perfect location to easily get to and from the United Center, and the accommodations were really nice.  The hotel was really clean and charming, and the staff helpful.  
Outfit details: Old Navy tee // Rebecca Minkoff crossbody // A&F jeans $20! // Golden Goose sneakers
After dropping our luggage off at the hotel, we headed to the train station to get downtown.  I've used public transportation in Chicago a decent amount, but never without the assistance of my bestie who's a local.  So buying our day passes and making it downtown successfully felt like a pretty big accomplishment, ha! 

Once downtown, we did a lot of the typical touristy things- hit up the Bean and Millennium Park, walked along the shoreline, and did some shopping at the Farmer's market.  We then headed back to the hotel to clean up and grab dinner and head to the concert. 
For the concert, I opted to keep my outfit pretty simple- just a lace-up black t-shirt dress and some comfy sneakers.  I had a bunch of you ask on Snapchat where my dress is from- and unfortunately I got it about 6 months ago from Marshalls and can't find it online anywhere.  It's by the brand 'Velvet Heart' and if you are able to track it down, just a word of warning it runs quite small.  
On the way to the concert, we grabbed dinner at Angel's, one of the only 4 restaurants in reasonable walking distance from our hotel.  It was a really casual Mexican joint, and it was delicious.  I typically prefer to try food that's a little more unique to the city or exciting, but I can't be mad at well-executed chicken enchiladas and chips and salsa.  
Finally, we made it to the concert, which was awesome!  I actually watched Adam Lambert's season of American Idol way back when, so it was really neat to see how far his career has come since then.  Plus they're all just so crazy talented!  They put on an excellent concert, and did justice to all the Queen classics.  
The next morning bright and early, we Ubered to Union Station, grabbed a quick breakfast at Pret A Manger, caught our train, and headed home.  It was a quick, but full and super fun day in Chicago!