New York: Day 1

Just a month after our Chicago trip, we headed to New York for Yosuke and Manami's wedding. We were able to find cheap tickets on Frontier from Cincinnati to Trenton, NJ. While this involved driving to Cincinnati, flying to New Jersey, taking a cab, and then a train into the city, it was still about half the time it would have taken us to fly. We got into Manhattan late Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning, we went to the Central Park Zoo.

After the zoo, we headed to the Plaza Hotel to check out the Eloise shop. Yosuke met up with us there. We walked quite a ways to the Shake Shake to grab lunch and then ate it outside Central Park before going in to explore.

Later in the afternoon, we headed to the High Line - an old abandoned railroad track that runs above the city and is now a beautiful walkway with gardens on either side, water features, and cool views.

For dinner,we ate some pizza in Brooklyn and then hung out in a park with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background before calling it a night. We sure crammed a lot into that first day!

Chicago: Part 2

Saturday morning, we got up and headed to Andersonville for brunch. We also met up with Kaitlyn and Mike, who'd gotten in late the night before.

After brunch, we stopped at the Swedish bakery to pick up some goodies and then headed to Swedish American Museum.

Of course, we had to stop for some delicious ice cream after the museum.

Saturday night, Sarah hosted a little graduation party/BBQ at her apartment. In what I consider to be the best Mother's Day present, Yusaku offered to take the kids back to the hotel to put them to bed and let me stay late and hang out with everyone. It was lots of fun...I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

Sunday morning, we visited Millennium Park and grabbed some lunch (and cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery) before we headed home. It was a great visit!

Chicago: Part 1

At the beginning of May, we traveled to Chicago - both to visit Sarah and celebrate her graduation from Loyola. My parents went up ahead up of us for her actual graduation, but because it took place in the middle of the week, we weren't able to make it. We got in late Thursday night, so we were able to get up Friday and take full advantage of the day. 

Our first stop was lunch at the American Girl store. It was pretty cute/funny, although the food wasn't that great.

After lunch, we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. My aunt, uncle, and Daniel met up with us afterward at the botanical garden. We hadn't expected Daniel to come, so it was a nice surprise to see him.

We ordered Giordano's pizza for dinner and ate it at Sarah's apartment.