Hey everyone! So today I wanted to share my day yesterday in Chicago with you!

Now, if you don’t know, Chicago was hit by very cold temperatures and snow over the past few days, so that did put a lot of stress on the day but more on that later! Had we not had to go to the city we likely would have stayed home. But I had bought tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera which is on tour in Chicago so we had to go into the city or let the tickets and money we spent go to waste. We had to go on this adventure!

It was still an amazing day so here we go!

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Heading out!

So in the morning my mom, sister, and I had planned to take an 8:45am train from my town into the city. However, my dad, who was going to drop us off, had to go into work, as he gets called in to help plow snow if the regular snow removal group at his work falls behind.

Since we live in a small subdivision, our roads are the last to be plowed. Although the snow had stopped hours before, we still weren’t clear. I have a small car, a Toyota Corolla, so I didn’t want to drive out in that and so we chose to stay put and wait to see if the roads would be cleared by the time we had to leave to catch the 10am train from one town over. We used the time to shovel our own driveway and finish getting ready, as well as eat some breakfast.

In the end, the roads were cleared and I ended up taking my very first Uber ride! Yup, I downloaded the app and we headed out. I used a promo code for a free ride as it was my first ride and we got dropped off. Since we left early anticipating heavy traffic after a night of heavy snow, we got there super early. We shivered a bit on the platform and spotted a Santa as well until we were able to get on the train and we were on our way!

#Ham4Ham

Now the reason we wanted to take a train at 8:45am in the first place was because the train at 10am would get us into the city at 11:30am, which was fine as we had tickets to the 2pm performance of Phantom but I had seen that the Hamilton cast was doing their first live #Ham4Ham performance in front of the PrivateBank Theatre at 11:30am and had wanted to try to catch that.

If you don’t know #Ham4Ham is something that the original New York City cast started and it’s continued to the Chicago cast. The idea is that there is a lottery for same day tickets that are given to those interested for $10. The $10 bill features the titular character, Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Treasury Secretary. So you literally give them a Hamilton bill for the chance to see Hamilton. These days the performances are done online, as the crowds got too big in NYC for the cast to continue doing these in person.

We had tickets to Phantom so we didn’t enter the lottery but we did want to see them perform. We’d already seen Hamilton (that I promise I’ll do a review on next month finally!) so we weren’t too upset about the prospect to miss them perform or to not take part in the lottery.

In the end we got into the city a little after 11:30am but we still wanted to see if we could try to catch the end of the cast doing the lottery. So we hurried from the train station to the theatre and we got there around 11:45ish. Which was actually just perfect! They came out a little after we arrived and performed a variation of “My Shot” and then conducted the crowd in singing “Jingle Bells”. It was a ton of fun!

After the sing-a-long we had plans to continue our day so we headed off again before the lottery announcements.

Christkindlmarket Chicago

We headed over to the Daley Plaza to the Christkindlmarket in Chicago next! I try to go every year and get their holiday mugs. This year the mugs are so cute! I miss the boots but this was such a cute shape and scene that I was fine with it. You can still see the Picasso and the little shops and the people in it! We also watched a brass quartet for a bit as well at the market.

The Phantom of the Opera

After the market we found lunch at a Corner Bakery and then headed back to the market again until closer to the performance. As I said earlier, a few months ago I had bought tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera which is on it’s two week tour in Chicago before the holidays. So despite cold weather and snow we had to go!

I’m actually going to do a review post on Phantom that will be posted tomorrow so keep your eyes out for that! What I will say was that it was an absolutely mesmerizing performance and I am so glad I saw it.

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And that was our Christmas themed day out in Chicago! Let me know what fun Christmas activities you like to get up to when you’re in your local city in the comments. I want to know!

Thanks for reading!