Engagement: The second

In case you've joined us in the middle of our little venture, I'm doing a chronicled saga of the day known as: The Engagement. If you'd like to catch up on what you've missed, feel free to hop on down and check out this post.

Quick recap, in case you'd rather not do any more reading than you've planned to: Mikey picked out my outfit, fed me breakfast in bed, brought me to Starbucks to get a delicious drink, fake proposed with a bottle of mead from the same batch of mead that we drank the night we met, and we've hopped on a train, heads all giddy (with excitement AND mead).



So, would you like to know where we went?

While we were on the train, Mikey bought out another little ring box. I wasn't as gullible this time around, but he still went through with the whole charade, and said something along the lines of,
"Keighley, I love you very much, will you............(extended super dramatic pause).......go to Chicago with me?"

Of course, I said yes.

I adore Chicago. I used to hop on the train all the time as a high school-er, ride down to the windy city, and either just hang out in a coffee shop, or walk to the art museum and poke around. It's pretty much one of my favorite places in the entire world, and we went there. It was drizzly that day, so we brought an umbrella, and took some goofy umbrella shots while walking to our (unknown to me) destination.



As it turns out, Mikey had done his research! The day we went down, there was a special little event going on. Maybe (if you're from the midwest) you've heard of it?

That's right- for all of you out there who enjoy gorging on deliciousness, it was the Taste of Chicago!

We walked around and sampled a ton of food- unfortunately, after two of the dishes we tried, the camera batteries died! We ended up buying more batteries later, but we got a few candid shots of the food and us enjoying it.

Here's the Italian meatball sandwich- doesn't it look delicious?
(See the yellow-gold ring on my finger? That's the 'chicago' proposal ring)


Mikey LOVED that sandwich, so I think he ended up eating a bit more of it than I did.

That's ok, though, because I had my shrimp! I love eating shrimp-can't you tell from my face?


It was like an egg-roll shrimp with some sort of magical sauce that makes you forget about anything bad that's ever happened. Needless to say, it was incredible.

After a while of walking around the lake front, drinking, and stuffing our faces (heaven!) Mikey looked at his watch and told us we had somewhere to be. So, we walked to a train station and got on. I had no idea where we were going, but I was pretty excited.

When we stopped, we got off and walked to an unassuming brown brick building about five blocks away. Inside, we found Allyu spa (check them out here). It was such a great atmosphere While we waited for our treatment (still had no idea what we were doing) we had some refreshing cucumber water and our choice of teas. Mikey and I reclined on comfortable benches (which was nice, since we were doing a lot of walking that day-- not that I'm complaining!) and talked about our favorites so far from the Taste. We finally were called in to change into our robes, and Mikey reached into his magical bag he was carrying around (normally my school bag) and pulled out a ring box. He got down on one knee, and so I started to get a bit nervous. He looked up at me, doe-eyed and all, and asked, "Keighley, will you enjoy this couples massage with me?"

This time, though, it wasn't a 25 cent ring- it was my nice claddaugh ring that he had given me for our one year anniversary. The band has broken a few months before, and there were always things we had to buy instead of repairing it. Well, he had sneakily taken it out of its case, and had gotten it fixed without me knowing it was even gone!

We enjoyed our couples massage (his first massage ever, and my second), thanked the wonderful staff there, and headed back to the train to go back to the Taste. Mikey had gone online ahead of time (I know I keep obsessing about how he did things beforehand, but really- it's quite a feat for him) and found out where the single gyro stand was in the entire place. Gyros are our romantic food (yeah, we're bizarre, but it just kind of...happened?) and so we had a gyro dinner (we split one- it was huge and super yummy) and then walked to the wine/dessert area for chocolate covered strawberries and Moscato, and then enjoyed a small ferris-wheel ride.

It was just starting to turn to dusk, and we were still light-headed from all of the fun (and wine), walking by the shoreline, when Mikey looked at his watch, looked up at me, and said, "Ummm, we gotta go. Do you think you could do a bit of running with me?"

Want to find out where we ran to? Tune in next time, for the continuing adventure!

But first, one last picture: Here's Mikey, looking all smug while digging into his magic bag, before the massage. He's a sneaky one, alright!



Share your theories of where we ran to, below!

Also, share your favorite food- this post has me hungry :)