Lollapalooza 2011

Picture-heavy post-- beware!

This past weekend I took a break from studying for prelims and hit up one of the largest music festivals in the country: Lollapalooza.

The festival is a 3 day affair PACKED with bands from big-names to small and takes place in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. This was my first year attending and I had so much fun. There were over 270,000 people there between the 3 days-- insanity!

Because of the wide array of bands, there was something for everyone in our 14 person friend group. Luckily I had no problems finding people who wanted to hit up some of the electronic acts with me.

Friday we saw:

Reptar

Foster the People

The Cults

Skrillex (one of my fave DJs!!)

The Skrillex show was absolutely insane. It was in a covered DJ stage and had awesome light effects. People were packed in so dense-- it was like taking a shower in other people's sweat. Definitely a highlight of the weekend.

OK Go

and Ratatat.

Ratatat is one of my all-time favorite bands, so I was thrilled to see them live. I turned down the other headliners playing at the same time (Coldplay, Muse and Girl Talk) and don't regret it at all.

We were really lucky to have a free place to stay with our friend Eric's old apartment. After packing 13 people into one small apartment (including 8 in one bedroom...) we hit up the local Mexican restaurants for breakfast on Saturday.

I had a chili relleno taco-- basically a stuffed green chili pepper with cheese, fried in cornmeal and wrapped in corn tortillas. Pure heaven.

Saturday we saw so many bands:

Phantogram

Fitz and the Tantrums (super awesome funk band!)

We got our dance on during the Fitz and the Tantrums show. So much fun.

The Chain Gang of 1974

The Drums

Local Natives

Ween

In between acts, we grabbed some food from the 'Farmer's Market' section of Lolla. They had organic vendors that were serving delicious healthy food for the same price as the fried stuff out on the main drag! I had an awesome mushroom salad and a local peach. Yum.

Back out in the fray we hit up:

Lykke Li

and Pretty Lights (another awesome DJ)

The Pretty Lights show was fun and had an incredible light show to go along with it. Unfortunately, it was around this time that I really started to notice my sore throat and runny nose.

I ended up coming down with a cold and leaving Lollapalooza a day early-- definitely worth it for the extra sleep! Lollapalooza was an awesome experience and a ridiculously fun time with friends and I will certainly be back next year.

Were any of you at Lolla this year? Or have you ever been to a music festival?