Happy Sunday! Today is my “me-day” for June. It’s nice to have a day to myself after my 10-day PHL/NYC travels last week. I had a great time catching up with my high school, college, and post-college friends in the city. Since last week’s post was on Philly, I thought I’d share parts of my NYC trip as well 🙂

First order of business was going to work. Ekkk, but…thanks to my work’s flexibility, I can work in the NYC office when I’m visiting town any time I want – that’s not so bad right? This way, I can visit my friends in the city whenever I want to!

The next thing was my friend Amy’s graduation. CONGRATULATIONS again!! Before we met up in the lower east side, I walked past this mural (which somehow snapchat had a Chelsea geo-tag on when it technically isn’t Chelsea…) of I ❤ NY. Super cute!

The weekend was then packed with activities between Mike a.k.a. PB, his friends, and my high school friends. We went on a liberty cruise that took us from 42nd street to the Statue of Liberty and back. I’m having too much fun with these geotags! (I should also note that the geotag near Wall Street is a bunch of $$ bills raining down – classic.)

chocolate tour in Brooklyn

On Sunday, we went on a chocolate tour at Mast Brothers. For those of you who don’t know, Mast Brothers is a gourmet chocolate company based in Brooklyn. They have really interesting flavors, my favorite being the Sea Salt and Goat Milk. We went for a tour around their small production site.

raw chocolate bites

During the tour, we got to taste chocolate throughout different stages of its production – from cocoa beans to the end product. These are chocolate rocks that are 70-80% on the finish line. The table in the picture has scratch marks all over it because they have to break the large rocks into smaller pieces before the next step.

along the east river

After the tour, we walked along the east river – it was a gorgeous day! It was warm and sunny, definitely a contrast to the cold and rainy weather in Chicago today 😦 Along the promenade, there were lots of chairs that you can sit on and soak in the surrounding. It was a memorable day of chatting, exploring and chilling – couldn’t have asked for better company!

flea market in brooklyn

In the afternoon, we visited a flea market in Brooklyn. It was situated outdoors, which turned out to be too hot to walk around in the heat 😦 but we still walked around for a bit and escaped to get a drink at a rooftop bar nearby shortly after.

There were more activities over the weekend that I haven’t highlighted here, including Escape the Room, Beauty and Essex, brunch, k-town, driving to Newark to pick my friend up, etc… of course, none of these things would’ve been as enjoyable as it was if I wasn’t hanging out with my closest friends. Thank you everyone for making the trip amazing!

I’m back in Chi-town with a lot of new memories.

With love,

Steph