Chicago to Indiana and Back

I have been having such an awesome time in Chicago! The weather has turned out to be pretty nice, the food rocks my world and the shopping isn’t half bad either. :)

Friday night we met some friends for dinner at Rosebud.

The restaurant was small and it was packed…thankfully we had a reservation!

I enjoyed some delicious wine:

We all split some calamari. It was excellent and the marinara sauce that came with it was really good.

My husband and I split the Caprese salad which was also excellent. The tomatoes were so fresh!

I poured balsamic vinegar all over mine. I cannot eat a Caprese salad without it.

For my entree I ordered the Linguine alla Vongole with the spicy tomato sauce.

Delicious! It was a huge bowl of pasta! The portion sizes at Rosebud were pretty big. I really enjoyed the food and would definitely eat there again.

We decided to take a walk (to make room for dessert) and saw a horse and carriage so we all took a ride by the lake.

It was a really unique and fun experience….I’m glad we did it!

We  stopped at Ghirardelli for dessert.

My husband and I split a hot fudge sundae with cookies at the bottom:

I had mine with an extra side of hot fudge. :)

Yesterday morning we were up bright and early to get ready to head down to South Bend, Indiana for the USC vs. Notre Dame foot ball game. I ate a Kind Bar for breakfast.

We rented a car and hit the road. We stopped at Starbucks and grabbed a snack along the way.

After about an hour and a half, we finally arrived at the house my brother was staying at. He went to Notre Dame and I went to USC so this was definitely a family rivalry!

We walked over to our tailgate spot and got the party started! Lunch was wine (in a red solo cup  because I’m classy like that) and a beyond delicious breakfast burrito that I split with my brother. I actually ate an entire burrito myself later. They were that good.

My brother and I:

Eventually it was time to make our way into the stadium for the game. It was the first night game at Notre Dame in twenty some odd years so I brought all sorts of cold weather gear. I actually was quite warm until just about the last quarter of the game. Glad I was prepared!

It was a exciting game….especially since USC won!!!

We waiting out the traffic a bit with my brother and then hit the road back to Chicago. My husband wanted to stop for stuffed pizza but there was only one place open and it was going to take 35 minutes before the pizza would have been ready. By that time it was 1 AM and I had it so we went back to the hotel and went straight to sleep.

I didn’t get out of bed until 11AM this morning. That’s 9AM my time ! I got dressed and we went straight to lunch at Pizzeria Due. They serve deep dish pizza and I was looking forward to trying it.

We split a Caesar salad:

And a small pizza with veggies:

It was good but I like the stuffed pizza better. I didn’t particularly like the crust on the deep dish pizza….it was too crunchy, almost biscuit like.

I did like the dessert though:

Chocolate chip cookie with ice cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream. What’s not to like!?!

I spent the rest of the afternoon burning off all those calories by doing some more shopping!

We have dinner plans tonight with a friend and then we fly home tomorrow. I can’t believe my time in Chicago is almost over!

Have you ever had deep dish pizza? What kind of pizza is your favorite?

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