Chicago Trip Part I: Favorite Spots

I just got back from a week in Chicago visiting my boyfriend, Andrew. He moved to Chicago in June, and while it is sad that he is so far away, the fun we have in the city makes up for it. He lives in the quaint(er) neighborhood of Lincoln Park in a charming ivy-covered one-bedroom apartment with wooden floors, stained glass windows and a cozy fireplace. Lincoln Park is a rather yuppy neighborhood, full of graduate students and moms pushing their Swedish strollers to the farmer's market, but it is not without character. Every time I visit, we discover something new and exciting together.

This time it was meerkats.

Seriously, we could not get enough of the meerkats at the Lincoln Park Zoo. We even went back and visited them a second time on a later day. They are just too funny! Especially when the are standing! Plus, the Meerkats are housed indoors so we could visit them without freezing to death. Plus Andrew kind of looks like a Meerkcat, no?

The Lincoln Park Zoo is also great because it's 100% free. We also visited the monkeys, the pigmy hippo, and the birds (all indoors!).

Also free and right next to the Lincoln Park Zoo is the Lincoln Park Conservatory, another perfect spot to visit in winter because it's warm, humid, and filled with green plants! It's like a little escape to a tropical island! They also did a special exhibit for Christmas, complete with toy trains and poinsettias of every color.

We actually brought our laptops and camped out on a bench so I could work on job applications. It's hard to stress about life after graduation when surrounded by the calming plants, especially after reading that some of the ferns in the Conservatory are over 200 million years old! The conservatory made me feel very reverent and Zen.

Lincoln Park is great!