Almost Home

Alex and I spent the past few days at Casa Foster in New Jersey getting organized and gearing up for our last stop: Japan. We also embarked on a three day juice cleanse in an attempt to undo some of the dietary damage we did while in Italy!

Trying to undo a year of being on "vacation!"

After three days of hibernating on a liquid diet we treated ourselves to a day in New York with friends and drinks (and food). Our friend Todd was kind enough to pick us up in Madison and dropped me off in Soho so I could meet another friend, Jennifer, in town from Chicago. I had a great afternoon shopping and catching up with Jennifer before meeting up with Alex, Todd, his wife Shannon and some other friends in Brooklyn at Radegast.

Hazy day in Manhattan.

Live band at Radegast.

So happy to be reunited with these girls!

Jumping off the health train at full speed, we ordered takeout from Pies 'n Thighs for dinner and enjoyed the nighttime views of NYC from Todd and Shannon's apartment in Williamsburg.

Best view in the world.

Good night, New York.

Today we have a 14 hour flight to Tokyo, where we meet up with Alex's mom, Janet, for 10 days of sightseeing. We can't wait to revisit our favorite spots with a new travel companion!

Back For A New York Minute

We flew in from London on Monday and tried to stay up as late as possible to avoid the inevitable jet lag. Alex's parents have graciously allowed us to crash at their NJ residence whenever we land in the NYC area so we took advantage of their hospitality, home cooking and laundry facilities for a couple days while we got ourselves sorted.

On Wednesday we drove into the city for a day of errands - mostly beauty treatments to remove excess hair and callouses - and a reunion dinner with our friends. Being surrounded by the faces we have missed so much over the past eight months was incredible - and a reminder of how at home we feel in New York!

Not the best quality image but definitely the best quality people.

Taking advantage of additional hospitality, we stayed with our friends Nikou and Mike in Brooklyn so we could get an early start on our drive to Massachusetts Thursday morning. We stopped in Boston for lunch with our former colleague Avi and made it to Newburyport by early afternoon so we could rest up for two days of wedding festivities.

Charming streets and shops in Newburyport.

Town Square.

Looking out into the marina.

I loved the "old-timey" feel of the shops and buildings.

So many sailboats!

We enjoyed a casual BBQ outside with the bride and groom before heading to bed early (Alex is the Best Man so he needed to be fresh for Friday's wedding events!).

I spent Friday exploring the charming town of Newburyport on foot and sampling the local blueberry iced coffee before returning to our hotel to get ready for the wedding. The weather had been cloudy but cleared up just in time for the ceremony and everything - including Alex's speech - went perfectly! Alex and I got to catch up with friends and enjoyed a night of dancing while celebrating an amazing couple.

Not our ride for the wedding!

Beautiful couple; beautiful day.

Congrats Todd and Shannon!

Someone's looking a little lighter...goodbye "beard!"

We woke up early on Saturday in order to drive to Montauk, the site of our wedding, to celebrate our one year anniversary for a couple of days. While the weather didn't exactly cooperate for spending time at the beach, we were able to revisit our favorite places and catch a pretty spectacular sunset on Sunday night. To top it all off, our wedding cake baker even made us a special free anniversary cake!

Saying goodbye to Todd...they didn't even plan the matching outfits!

One of our favorite beaches in Montauk.

Back to Montauk Yacht Club: site of our wedding last year!

Sunsets at Navy Beach are almost always incredible.

Sky on fire.

One more in front of the sunset.

Mussels - a new favorite for us! - at Dave's for a special anniversary dinner.

Monday was beautiful so we spent a few hours enjoying the beach - without weekend vacationers! - before making the drive back to NJ.

Today we head to Italy for another wedding and plan to spend our time focusing on friends, food and fun. Ciao!

Party in the USA

Miles: 10,443

We made it! And, importantly, the Avalon did too!

The last two months have flown by for us: we drove more than 10,000 miles across the country and back, celebrated four weddings with family and friends, saw some amazing sights (and took some incredible pictures), ate some great food, drank delicious drinks, and even made it to Sarah's first SEC football game!

We always wanted to allocate some time in our year-long journey to seeing the US and we are so glad we did. There are so many beautiful places across the country and we'd highly encourage you to check out our favorite spots (in no particular order): Jackson Hole, WY; Grand Teton National Park; Sedona, AZ; Grand Canyon National Park; Monument Valley, AZ; and White Sands National Monument. Not only were these places magical to visit, we walked away with some of our best pictures of the trip so far! You can check out our USA gallery here.

Thank you very much to all our hosts along our journey. Half the fun of seeing the US has been catching up with you along the way and we'll miss you while we're abroad!

Tomorrow we fly to Japan to begin the next eight months of our journey! It's a six-hour flight to LA then another 11 hours to Tokyo - good thing we each have about five books to choose from to keep us occupied! See you in June, USA!

New York, New York

Sarah and I spent Wednesday and Thursday in cold-recovery mode. We have a lot to do before we leave, but we took advantage of my mom's delicious home cooking, slept through our alarms and tried to knock off the least strenuous activities from our to-do list.

By Thursday (my birthday, by the way!), we were both feeling well enough to take a long walk through the woods of Madison. The weather was perfect for a fall day in New Jersey - and the mild exercise was probably good for our colds too!

Strolling through the woods.

Lots of colorful leaves, though most had fallen off the trees at this point!

After our walk we were treated to a delicious home cooked meal to celebrate my birthday. My brother, Nick, and his girlfriend, Michelle, made the trek out from the city to join us and my Aunt Jill and Uncle Dave drove up from southern Jersey as well. It was great to catch up with the family, especially because this is the only time along our whole year-long journey that we'll get to see Nick, Michelle, Jill and Dave!

Family shot before dinner.

And we even had a proper birthday cake.

Feeling rested (and almost over our colds) we drove into New York City on Friday to tackle some of our remaining to-dos. I bought a coat and boat shoes; Sarah got some pants and make-up (among other things). After running around the city all day, we split up for dinner: Sarah met up with our friend Dana and I got together with another friend Brendan. It's always great to catch up after being gone for so long!

On Saturday we had brunch with our friends Ally and Hayden at Sweet Chick, which turned out to be amazing. Sarah always says there's not much high quality southern food in the city - but Sweet Chick definitely filled that void for her!

Our afternoon / evening on Saturday revolved around our last wedding of the year - my good friend Dan and his fiancée Ali got married in The Green Building in Brooklyn. The venue was very cool - and very appropriate for Dan and Ali! - plus it wasn't a far drive from our hosts' apartment in Williamsburg (thanks again Sam and Nicole!).

Pre-wedding photo at Sam and Nicole's place.

The happy couple's first kiss! (Also, Dan puts my beard to SHAME.)

Doing our best imitation of the bride and groom in their photobooth.

Today we headed over to our friends' Ali and Caleb's place to watch the NYC Marathon. Fortunately we had an extra hour to sleep due to Daylight Savings Time (especially after the late night on Saturday!). We had a great time watching the runners go by Ali and Caleb's living room window, but not long after the race was over it was time to say goodbye to all our friends.

It's been a great weekend here in NYC but we need to head back to NJ to finalize our preparations for the longest leg of our trip. We're very excited to see Japan on Wednesday but sad to be away from our friends and family for eight months!

Sick Days

Miles: 1,030

Route: Nashville, TN - Charlotte, NC - Madison, NJ

We arrived in Charlotte after dark on Monday night and had just enough time for a nice dinner and quick driving tour of the city with our hosts, Steve and Jenny.

Having never spent much time in Charlotte, other than a couple of brief work stopovers at the airport, we both enjoyed checking out the downtown area (which looked pretty nice, even at night). Steve gave us the hard sell on a city where A. we could both reasonably obtain finance jobs, B. the weather was nicer, and C. we might actually be able to afford buying a house in the next 10 years (unlike Manhattan!). We don't know where we'll end up after our adventure, but it's possible we've added Charlotte into the consideration pile!

Alex woke up Tuesday morning with a bad cold so I went for a solo run and got to check out a bit of the residential area near Myers Park. The neighborhood is very picturesque, with huge canopy-like trees, tons of green space and many older, beautiful homes. There is actually a widely known path through the area that locals have taken to calling the "Booty Loop" due to the number of young women who jog along the streets.

Paused to snap a picture of Freedom Park on my morning run.

Queens Road was covered in a canopy of big, old trees.

After my run Alex and I got cleaned up and started the drive north to Washington, DC. We stopped in South Hill, VA for a quick lunch and realized we have done a great job of avoiding fast food in the US (which is good not only for health-related concerns, but also because I prefer Wendy's and Alex has die-hard loyalty to McDonald's).

"Southern" Greek salad with fried green tomatoes. Doesn't this look better than a greasy fast-food meal?

After lunch I took over driving because Alex 's cold had resulted in violent coughing fits every few minutes. We hoped he would start to feel better after a few hours but instead his conditioned worsened and - no surprise since we were sharing a small space together - I started to feel sick too. As we headed into Washington, DC we made the sad decision to bypass our two days there and head directly home to Madison, NJ for some rest. We had been looking forward to spending some quality time with our hosts there, Bill and Emily, and checking out Alex's favorite college stomping grounds but knew that we needed to get healthy before embarking on our 8 month journey, which begins next week already!

We just got to Madison and will spend the next few days resting and sleeping so we can gear up for one last weekend (and wedding!) in New York before getting organized and prepared to spend 8 months outside of the US. Fingers crossed we can kick these colds before then!