A LITTLE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
are you still allowed to throw yourself birthday parties when you're an adult? yes? ok good - i'm glad we got that cleared up. a few weekends ago, i picked up my best friends from the train station and the airport and headed downtown for a little staycation. the day before, my sister and i filled the last balloons and picked up the last batch of decorations in order to make the most of the weekend.
while we waited for our hotel rooms to be ready, we walked to the nearest starbucks to fuel up before the long night ahead. the barista overheard our conversations and made the whole store sing to me (there were only three or four people in there besides us ;)
after we were sufficiently caffeinated, we hit the nail salon to get pampered before dinner. when our hotel rooms were finally prepared, we got ready for dinner and headed headed out.
i had first learned about the hampton social from seeing their infamous neon sign all over instagram. i booked a reservation as soon as this birthday weekend idea popped into my head. they had the cutest decor, good food - everything lived up to its hype.
that night, we stayed up way too late, ate lots of treats, got locked out of our room after going out to get said treats, and just caught up.
the next morning we took it slow, grabbed some coffee, and just hung out. at lunchtime, we packed up our bags, checked out of the hotel, and headed to cindy's, one of my favorite chiacgo spots. it's right above the chicago athletic hotel, and the rooftop view is insane. the fall colors made the whole experience a thousand times better. so freakin' cool.
our reservation was at 1, and we waited around for about 45 minutes until we decided to just skip it and grab burgers and fries from the shake shack downstairs. we got some great pictures though, and it was so great up there! i still highly recommend it.
after lunch, more photos were taken, per usual, and then we headed to grab donuts and shop around a little.
there's a bit more footage of the rest of our time in the city at the end of the video. even though i live here, it was such a fun little break from reality. thanks so much to my sister claire for taking the photos, and thanks to sarah, natalie, and lauren for being the truest, best, most amazing friends a girl could ever ask for. i love ya, babes.
post by molly garvin
images by claire garvin