Travel

Travel
Travel

San Francisco

San Francisco
San Francisco

Laugh With Me

Laugh With Me
Laugh With Me

A New York Minute

Man, that fabled New York Minute. It really is something, you know?

New York is such a fast paced city. Everyone knows that. The energy here is second to none. I've come to realize that life, time, whatever here is a blur; sometimes you move with the blur. Other times, you're completely still and in the center of the blur, watching it all happen around you. The eye of the storm, if you will.

I've had equal moments of both. There was this one night last week when I was coming home a liiiiitle ... woozy ... and it was sundown, that time of the day that practically drags self-reflection into the game, and the yellow taxicab was racing through the streets at way illegal speeds, and the breeze was blowing in and I literally started laughing to myself in the backseat, just moving along with the blur and letting the thought that I was existing at that very second in the belly of New York City hit me hard. Brunching with newer friends - um, eggs Benedict on french toast with maple bacon what the what - and dinnering with olllllddddd friends and spending a whole weekend with my big sister and walking the streets of this crazy little city ... and trivia nights and happy hours and getting stuck in a subway tunnel during rush hour and so, so many other moments. A happy blur.

But maybe this is the homebody in me raising her hand and speaking up - I'm a little partial to the still moments too. Watching 30 Rock on Netflix in bed, with World Cup cheers and groans roaring in from the open windows and the fan blasting on high speed. And my solo latte runs, in which I drink in both the godly nectar of caffeine as well as the atmosphere of NYC. Oh, and those evenings that I crave - the ones where I Seamless dinner and eat while catching up on my favorite blogs. Those are pretty nice, too.

The blur and the still. Really, they go hand in hand, don't they?
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5 Coffees That Had Me Saying, "UM. WOW."

How 'bout we talk about my good friend, Joe?

I love a good coffee. I love a bad coffee. I love anything that pumps caffeine into my veins within thirty minutes of my annoying Marimba alarm. I changed it to "I See The Light" from the Tangled soundtrack for two weeks, but then decided I didn't want such a peaceful song associated with the most miserable time in the day. Default iPhone alarms, it is.

I digress.

Coffee. Cassandra hates the coffee I drink on school mornings, because I throw as many hazelnut and french vanilla creamers, splashes of soy milk, and raw sugar into my cup as I can when no one's looking, and she thinks it's too sweet. Sure. Okay. Whatever gets the job done. Which actually usually means Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts on the way to work more recently. But there have been a few coffees I've had in my life that have literally made me stop in my tracks, and go: WOW this is good.

In no particular order:

Sant'Eustachio Il Caffe - Rome, Italy
Supposedly the best cappuccino in Rome.
Maybe all of Italy.
I don't disagree.

Stumptown Coffee - New York, New York
The inspiration for this post.
I ordered an iced latte because it was lazy Sunday,
and I was literally speechless after the first sip. Such magic.

Blue Bottle Coffee - San Francisco, California
Funnily enough, I've had more Blue Bottle since coming to NYC,
than I actually did in its native home of San Francisco.
My go-to is still an iced latte (as always), but I'm trying out an iced New Orleans next time.
Heard it's more or less incredible.

Monmouth Coffee - London, England
Situated in the very best place in all the world - Borough Market,
Monmouth has a very special spot in my heart.
I dragged my coffee snob of a friend here, who was reluctant to believe
that Caroline-who-loves-crap-coffee could find actually decent java.
He glared at me, took a sip, said a bunch of swear words, and went - "HOLY, wow."

Philz Coffee - Bay Area, California
My friend has a little song, a little jingle for when we make a Philz run,
that's how happy Philz makes us.
A go-to for Silicon Valley types, there's always important meetings going on
that you can catch tidbits of. And Dave Franco goes a lot, too, apparently.
The specialty coffees here are my favorite.
Iced Mint Mojito coffee, Gingerbread Latte, and my personal favorite - Ecstatic Iced Coffee.
Can't go wrong here.

Honorable mentions: quite a few, we'll leave it at that.

Where did you find the best coffee you've ever had?

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That 9-to-5 Grind

weekend treats // new sunglasses, work clothes, and literal treats, too.

One week later, well, I've survived!

First off, thank you for all the first day of work wishes last week. You guys are always so good to me.

For obvious reasons, there's not too much I can share specifically about the new gig. But I can say that my office is in 30 Rockefeller. Think Liz Lemon, but on the corporate side. And, like, a million rungs down that ladder. Plus a couple more. Plus a really good coffee machine. It's just as awesome as it sounds.

This internship is my first taste of a 9-to-5 job. The verdict? I miss not blowing all my money on work clothes (read: no sweatpants what), although it's the best and most dangerous thing in the world to have a J.Crew, Anthropologie, Banana Republic, AND A BEN & JERRY'S in the basement of your office. Can I just say that my routine post-work, pre-subway peek at the summer sales has been absolutely detrimental to my bank account? I miss having energy in the evening, instead of surrendering to shuteye and a couple of episodes of Orange Is The New Black. I miss naptime. I miss two classes being my only obligations most days. I miss unblistered, Rainbows-clad feet. I miss not having to turn myself into a canned sardine during rush hour subway traffic. 

But you know what.

Other than that, it's not too terrible at all. As far as jobs internships go, mine's really rad. It's exciting. It's full of energy. It's challenging, but in that motivating, inspired way. It's teaching me all kinds of things I didn't know before. It's allowing me to apply all the theories and lessons I've been lectured on and that I've written pages and pages about, in a real world capacity. That's pretty awesome. 

So, yes, the first day and the first week has been swell. But I do miss naptime. 
8

Papa Does Pancakes // Clinton St Baking Company + A Good Start

Live from New York, it's Monday morning!!

As you're reading this, I'm most likely en route to my first day of Big Girl Work. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

2014 has thrown me a lot of opportunities, which I'm SO grateful for. But even more near and dear to my heart, 2014 has thrown me a lot of big ticket dreams. Namely, traveling through Europe and getting to live in New York City. Here's to hoping that this summer in the Big Apple turns out even half as spectacular as my winter in Europe!

I've got all the ingredients to a good start in a new place: a cute (albeit tiny) room, a fun neighborhood, and of course, a go-to Sunday latte find. Well, other than Dunkin Donuts, you know how it is.

Ooh, and one more thing. A belated Happy Father's Day to my daddy! Thank you so much for getting up at 4:00am to take me to NYC and for figuring out subway lines and queueing over an hour in this ridiculous line to eat some (ridiculously good and fluffy and drizzled with maple syrup) pancakes with me. Love you times a million :)
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Beachin It, Brunchin It (With Emma Roberts), and Munchin It // #CCTakesSoCal

Four days in Orange County and Los Angeles can pass by fairly quickly, especially if one of those days is Memorial Day and spent laying out on the sand like a beached whale. Like a tanned, fat, blissfully happy beached whale.

That, essentially, was the end result of the previous three days. The only thing we could fathom doing over a very busy three days BBQing and watching The Other Woman in theaters for the second time and eating everything that we possibly could (acai bowls - wow. Cafe Rio sweet pork salads - WOW. WOWOWOW.) and getting milkshakes at Sonic and trying macaron ice cream sandwiches at Milk (wowowowwwwww) doing some window shopping at The Grove after circling blindly around in LA traffic because we were hyperventilating and couldn't breathe and were flipping the eff out and were panicking and for goodness sake, we just didn't know what to do 

BECAUSE

We had brunch with Emma Roberts and her boyfriend of X-Men fame, Evan Peters.

I mean, like not with with them. And it truly was a matter of serendipity, really. Because Cassandra and I are two celebrity connoisseurs and each time we go to LA, we keep our fingers crossed and go through a list of 'what if we run into so-and-so' contingency plans and we talk alllllll about how we're going to be cool about it.

This time, we barely went through our process and had very low expectations. And we didn't know where to go for brunch, so we Yelped it and found a cute little place called Kings Road Cafe that sounded decent. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the hostess asked us if we'd rather sit inside or outside and we gave noncommittal shrugs because we're both so indecisive. So she sat us inside, where it was practically empty compared to its very full outside dining area. We ordered a vanilla latte - Cassandra says it's the best she's ever had - and an ahi tuna salad that was so delicious and crab cake Benedict WHAT YUM. There we were just ravenously chomping down on our food, when...

In walked Emma with her boyfriend. They sat at the table right behind me, literally if I leaned back too far, I would've fallen right into his waffles. Cassandra and I ate mostly in silence, occasionally commenting in too-loud voices about who-knows-what, and kept on trying to see whether or not she was texting Aunt Julia about these two really cool mute girls she was sitting right next to.

(Don't think she was.)

Anyway, that was an exciting moment in an already very much-needed and wonderful mini-vacay. So yes, for four whole days - we ate and drank and hung out with starlets and laid out like beached whales. The end.

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