May and June in Full Bloom
May and June flew by with minimal downtime. Here's to hoping for a slower summer.
May
These past two months were a whirlwind! I started off May by flying to Atlanta, Georgia to meet with one my top advertisers. It was my first time to Atlanta and I was surprise how warm and green it was.
I stayed at The Starling in Midtown, as it was close to the Atlanta Google office. It was near Piedmont Park so before my meeting, I hoped on one of those rental scooters and toured the area. What I did not know, is how expensive those scooters are! It was close to $20 for 30 minutes of me just taking a leisurely ride.
One of the best parts about work trips, is going out to dinner with your colleagues. We definitely wanted Southern food, so the first night we had South City Kitchen. The fried green tomatoes were the star of the show! The second night we went to a seafood restaurant for oysters and then got cocktails at the Four Seasons.
While flying into Atlanta’s airport, my colleague told me that Atlanta is the world’s busiest airport and there is a whole documentary on it on Amazon. If you are into aviation, I’d recommend!
I took advantage of being on the East Coast and flew 1.5 hours to Raleigh, North Carolina. My whole family had temporarily moved to Greenville, North Carolina for a job so I wanted to check out their new location, which is about a 2 hour drive from Raleigh.
There’s not much happening Greenville, so once I made the drive to Greenville, we immediately got in one large minivan and drove another two hours to The Outer Banks. This was actually my first time touching the Atlantic ocean! We stayed in the cutest Airbnb right on the sand where we could see dolphins, crabs, and sand pipers.
Fast forward to Memorial Weekend, I jumped on another plane to visit my grandma in Vegas. I absolutely adore weekends with my grandma, or “Koonyai” as my family calls her. Her house is always so clean and cool, it’s like stepping into a hotel. I truly get the best of both worlds when going to stay with Koonyai. I can get some downtime and calmness in her senior citizen neighborhood, but also take a 20 minute Uber to the Las Vegas Strip if I wanted to go see a show, visit a club or grab a nice dinner.
On this trip, Koonyai and I saw Blue Man Group and went to a nice steakhouse at the M Casino. On the last day of the trip, I met up with some high school friends and laid out at the pool at The Flamingo.
I ended the month of May with a Duffy ride in the bay for a friend’s birthday. This was my first Bay Area Duffy ride - and it’s a lot more choppy than taking a Duffy out in the harbors of Huntington or Newport Beach. But equally as fun — especially because you get views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the City! While on the Duffy, I saw that they were building saunas where you can plunge into the bay after! I’m definitely booking a session here in the future.
June
On June 6th, Justinas went to his green card appointment in London and it got approved! I celebrated Stateside by seeing Banks live at The Masonic.
The rest of June was spent getting the apartment ready for Justinas arrival with a few bits of social activities in between. Some highlights were going to The Opera to see La Bohème, eating Outta Sight Pizza, seeing The Materialists and then getting sushi from Mamanoko, Chinatown Night Market, and a Pavolva at a friend’s dinner party.
Justinas ended up landing in San Francisco on June 19th! We still can’t believe he’s here and neither of us have to pack our bags and say goodbye again.
To celebrate his arrival, we did a staycation at The Claremont in Berkeley — a gorgeous historic hotel overlooking The City. We played tennis on the property and lounged by the pool — they had great Bloody Marys.
We also explored the nearby neighborhoods and had pastries from Fournée Bakery (10/10), dinner at Donato & Co (eh) and mango and sticky rice shaved ice at U Dessert Story (yum).
Somehow between all the travels, moving, and socializing, Justinas and I both landed new job opportunities. More on that to come soon… but until then, we rest.