Wednesday, June 1, 2016

BEA 2016 Recap: Day 1 Tuesday & Wednesday!


Hello there guys!!

Finally, my recap of my BEA 2016 trip is here!! It's been a few days in the making but BEA brain is a thing and if we add my vacation time, the blogging slump and coming back from vacation to real life and work... Well, it was bound to take a while!

Last year I did 3 recaps, one per day and this year it'll be the same format again! After trying to do all three days in one post and looking at the lenght of it and my overly verbose self... three posts it is!

All three of them filled to the brim with photos and my overly enthusiastic rambling about my amazing room mates, all the awesome peeps that I met, the brilliant authors I was lucky enough to meet and of course LE BOOKS!


TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY

On Tuesday I left Wisconsin where I had been staying with friends of mine to ride a bus to Chicago. Once I arrived at the hotel I met most of my bloggy friends and room mates doing the check-in already, which meant loads of squealing and hugging and happy noises to the surprise and moderate amusement of the Hyatt staff.




I've said it before and I will say it time and again, the best thing about BEA is always the people! I adore all my roomies and without them BEA wouldn't be a a tenth of how awesome it is! If you are planning to do BEA, make sure you do it with friends! I adore my BEA Duck Squad and I cannot wait till I can meet them all again!!

We're missing Michelle here!

So thank you so very much Angie, Becca, Britt, Cassi, Christina, Katie, Michelle, Nikki, Octavia, Rachael and Shelly!!

After getting settled in the rooms and a few lil hiccups, we all went on a walk to go shopping at Target. Yes, I'm always willing to go along for all that but I had no idea why we were going there, but people needed to buy some snacks and water... and we ended up filling our cart with that AND loads of booze... Adulting hard right there! Given that I had already packed snacks in advance, I settled for some water, boring one that I am.


I found this stand for sangría and that price hilarious!

After that we were all extremely hungry and wanted to go to Lou Malnati's for Chicago's famous Deep Dish pizza! We split in two groups, the ones that were so hungry (and a bit tired) that wanted to go now and the others that wanted to wait for a while. My jet lagged arse was hungry and tired so off we went! The wait at Lou Malnati's was looooong but holy smokes, the pizza was worth it!



 Om nom nom nom!!

Then back to the hotel room where we left Katie locked out of the room without realizing it... the stupid bolt fell a lil to the side and the door couldn't be open! Thank goodness for all of us rooming in the same floor!

Wednesday started with me waking up at ungodly hours (yaaaay jet lag!), trying to get some more sleep, failing, getting up and doing some yoga and then going for a Blogger breakfast at Yolk organized by the lovely Wendy from Book Scents where I had Potato Pancakes that were super yummy but couldn't eat them all (Americans, you have huge portions!!). From there we went to get our badges and then sat on the line to wait for the floor to open. The waiting time is always good to plan and see what drops might be and study the map to see where all the booths you want to visit are in relation to each other and , since I had no signings on my schedule for Wed.






As it happened there was a drop for Double Down by Gwenda Bond as soon as the doors opened so I went straight there! Then roaming around the booths to get their schedules and I ended up grabbing a few books that freed my Thursday schedule! I was quite lucky to get The Forgetting because right before the drop I had asked about it at the booth and they had no idea if there was gonna be a drop (WTF?!), also cheated a lil bit at the "roll the dice" game at Hachette because I really just wanted Blood For Blood, got my so very awaited A Shadow Bright and Burning (Penguin drop!) and asked about Ghostly Echoes at the booth and was so very lucky to be handed one copy! Harper's drop for Aerie was a bit of a mess, but no harm done (and they learnt from the experience!).

Also it was great that I met so many of my bloggy friends like Jenny, Mel, Hafsah & Asma, and many more!


Day 1 haul!!

 After all the excitement of the first day that wasn't as laid back as I was expecting but that was oh so very productive we all went for dinner at Shake Shack and oh boy CHEESE FRIES!! I understand why all my friends were so keen on it! Also, foreigner speaking here, those buzzers they give you so you can pick up your order when it's ready? Such a good idea!




Then after the food it was another trip to another Target, but on our way there we stopped at a souvenir store so I could get some shopping done and then we took an Uber back to the hotel and soon to bed for me because I was pretty much beaten and jet lag is a bitch!

7 comments:

  1. I am so jealous I can't stand it! I need cake to make myself feel better. But at the same time, I love that you had such a wonderful first day and I can't wait to hear about the rest. Also, I want cheese fries now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheese fries are quite awesome! And BEA is quite something to experience, and always always to be done with friends!

      Delete
  2. Yippee! It sounds like really tiring long days but the books, the food and most of the PEOPLE definitely make it look like it was so much fun!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It really was! BEA is awesome because of the people!!

      Delete
  3. Sorry I am so late getting to these! I was crap at commenting last week. I am going to put you on the spot! Which pizza do you like better? New York thin crust, or Chicago deep dish? Ha ha. :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As a rule, I prefer a thinner, crunchier crust, but my fave pizza is neither NYC nor Chicago's, it has to be one made in Goa, think crust and open oven baked for us in the beach! ;)

      Delete
  4. YAY for awesome food, lol :D Lovely recap post Pili. <3 Gosh, I am SO glad you had such an amazing time at BEA :D Yesss. And aw, yay for meeting lots of awesome people, and getting all those gorgeous books. <3 All the hugs.

    ReplyDelete

¡Muchas gracias por vuestros comentarios, leerlos me alegra el día!/ Thanks a lot for all your comments, reading them brightens my day!!