Green Street Reunion

June 17th - 19th

We always look forward to this weekend every year. It is so much fun to get together with old friends and pick up where you left off, catch up on life and see how much kids have grown. This year we celebrated Jeremy & Remy's new house by all camping outside on their farm.

We spent our days laughing, playing in the creek, running around and hanging out.

I think we all look the exact same, the kids just get older.

#Icesterlin Day 13

June 4th & 5th

These were a blur of two days. We started in Amsterdam and were on a bus to the airport pretty early. We hopped on a flight to Iceland where we didn't have a lot of time to transfer from one flight to the next but in our panic, we make an impressive stop in the Iceland gift shop for a few last minute gifts and jumped on our final flight to NYC.

We landed with enough time in the day to get to our hotel, have a quick change and meet up with Audrey's brother, Chris, for dinner. I feel like one of the first things we always go from when we get back into the states, particularly when we flight in and out of New York, is pizza. And this trip was no exception. Thankfully, Grimaldi's was right around the corner.

The pizza and company was great and we were so out of it, that after we paid our check and left, we realized we had WAY over paid the guy. We are pretty sure our waiter walked away with a very generous tip. We made a quick stop at another NYC favorite, Doughnut Plant for a few doughnuts before headed to Chris' apartment to hang out.

On our way back to our hotel we stopped at a few NYC most sees before calling it a night. It felt like a super long day as well as a crazy quick day and before we knew it, we were sound asleep in our hotel.

The next morning was probably the worst, it was the day we were all dreading. The day we all had to say good bye. In an effort to prolong the inevitable, we walked to find a bagel shop, and wandered the streets of the city before Jed & I had to grab our packs one last time for the drive home and Eric & Audrey had to jump on their last flight back to LA.

One last slice in the rain with all our gear on our way out of the city.

As Jed & I always try and do, we make a quick stop at Hershey's Chocolate World for the best chocolate milk shake to try and drowned out the sadness. It is still hard to believe our vacation
is over and it is time for us to head home and join the working world again, but it was a spectacular vacation with the best of friends and we are all excited to see where we end up next.

#Icesterlin Day 12

June 3rd
There was definitely a disappointment when we got up this morning knowing that this was the first day to head home but we were determined to make the best of the next few travel days. We started with finding a local breakfast place near the hotel (Backerei Cafe Tuna Berlin - Mitte)

After some good food and great conversation, we took off for one more adventure in Berlin at the Charlottenburg Palace. The Palace was under pretty heavy renovation but they were still giving tours of many wings inside. So we grabbed tickets for the next tour and off we went with head phones and a tour guide in our ear. For an hour or so we wondered bedrooms, formal seating areas and ballrooms. It felt so out of place from all the other areas that we had toured during our time in Berlin but it was all so fascinating.

After we were done with the tour and walking around the grounds, we checked our watching and realized we were cutting it pretty close to making back to the hotel for our 1pm checkout so we set off running to catch the subway back to the hotel to check out on time. Since we were loaded down with all of our luggage and didn't have enough time to explore any other parts of the city, we decided to make our way to the airport.

We had way too much time at the airport and quickly realized that we had booked our flights out of a pretty small airport and quickly ran out of places to window shop and very few places to grab lunch. Eric & Audrey did take the opportunity to get a Berliner donut where I learned the history of "Ich bin ein Berliner". President Kennedy was addressing West Berlin when trying to say "I am a citizen of Berlin" but the story goes, the way he pronounced it, he really said, "I am a jelly filled doughnut". We did eventually decide on some lunch and killed a lot of time just hanging out in the small waiting area.

The flight to Amsterdam was pretty quick and in no time we were waiting for our shuttle to our Amsterdam airport hotel. Little did we know at the time that this shuttle was super late, super expensive and the hotel was really, really, REALLY far away from the airport. But the time we were picked up, checked in and realizing all of the pit falls of the situation we had gotten ourselves into we were pretty disappointed. But we decided to rally, bit the bullet & the cost and make a 10 minute turn around to go back to the airport to hop on the train to head back into the heart of Amsterdam. We all just loved the city and didn't want to spend our last night overseas in some boring hotel in the middle of nowhere eating snacks out of a vending machine.

Once we finally made it into the city we were all really glad we had done it and were so excited to be walking around Amsterdam again. We found a great little place for dinner at Molly Malone's but as soon as we sat at the table, we learned stopped service dinner. We were bummed but they were nice enough to recommend a place to eat a few doors down at a Lebanese Restaurant, dabka.

Revisiting my favorite spot in Amsterdam

The food was great, the atmosphere was a lot of fun and we were really glad to have a real meal.

The one thing that Audrey & I really, really wanted to do was go back to our favorite "watering hole", Wynand Fockink, and grab one or two more drinks before we headed back to the hotel. You can imagine our disappointment when we got there and it was already closed. We were pretty defeated but again, we rallied and spent the rest of the evening walking through a new favorite city checking out all of the sites and sounds. It wasn't what we had planned for the night but it was still a great day.