You guys. This weekend was the BEST.

I’ve talked about it before, but the blogging and social media communities are amazing. You’re able to find people with similar interests and almost pre-screen them before even meeting. After commenting and getting to know people online, it feels like you’ve known each other forever when you actually meet in person.

My friends Ashley and Jess came to visit me for a long 4-day weekend. I had met and spent time with both of them before, but this was a legit girls weekend. We weren’t together for an event or a conference, just to be friends, eat food, and relax.

The Food

Rather than bore you with a step by step itinerary, I figured I would give you some highlights from the weekend. Let’s start with food because duh.

Ashley has a wonderful food blog (if you don’t follow her, change that) and brought us some of her chocolate chunk turmeric cashew butter cookies. I ate about 4 the first day and we polished them off before she left. They’re so good.

We wound up at True Food Kitchen twice during their stay — once for lunch and once for brunch before they left. I think I like their brunch menu the best, but honestly everything I’ve had there is phenomenal.

We made a stop at Aloha Poke since it is one of my favorite places.

Of course Jeni’s ice cream because it’s incredible. I feel like I’m running out of adjectives here.

Saturday night we went shopping for steak and fish and Neil made us all dinner at home. We had planned for a nice healthy dinner, which it was, but I still ended up eating a ton of it.

The Fitness

We did manage to squeeze in a couple workouts during the weekend — first attending an influencer yoga event at Corepower Yoga put on by CASA Wellness Friday night.

You all know how I feel about yoga, but Ashley and Jess dig it and I’ve been meaning to try new wellness things, so FINE.

It was a heated power sculpt class and the smell immediately brought me back to my month of doing Bikram when I lived in VA. Once I got used to it I was fine, the class was actually pretty tough, and I was drenched by the end.

Only a little more than 12 hours later I took them to a workout at BTY Training Lab, which was a little different from yoga.

We knocked out a bootcamp workout with everything from running and rowing to wall balls and pullups. My body was not having it, but I got it done. I blame all the food and the hot yoga the night before. 🙂

The Relaxing

The Hyatt Centric The Loop was gracious enough to accommodate us for our amazing four days and three nights (thank you!).

I shared a lot of the hotel (and the weekend) on my Instagram stories, but this hotel was great for a lot of reasons.

We were welcomed to our room with some local chocolates and a book illustrating pictures of the same locations in the past vs. now. It’s really interesting and I have a great new coffee table book!

The beds were great, the bathrooms were huge, and we spent every morning heading down to The Corner on the 3rd floor where you could make yourself any one of 123456747 different types of coffee or tea drinks for free.

One of my favorite things was the huge shower and the fact that there was NO DRAIN. Ok, there was a drain, but it was invisible and the water drained to the side and down a crack in the floor. I literally talked about it all weekend because I really hate drains.

There’s also a huge tub that’s great for baths, but I also hate those, so I skipped it. Figured it was worth mentioning for those of you who relish in them. Gross. 🙂

We didn’t get a chance to check out their rooftop because it opens in May, but here’s a shot of it from their site.

The location was perfect — away from crazy Michigan Avenue, but close enough to all the trains and walking distance to a lot of the places we had planned.  It was so nice to be in the city where I live, but not have any work. It was my first staycation and I had the best people to spend it with.

They had to leave on Sunday, but we are already brainstorming ways to see each other again. I’ll see Ashley in a couple weeks when we both go to the Everything Food Conference in Utah — anyone else going?

That’s all for the weekend — one spent relaxing, laughing, and just spending time with people you care about. I hope you all had a great weekend and have an even better week!