Now we’re off to Berlin!

June 28– Amsterdam to Berlin

Another travel day, another early morning. We attempted to make most of our travel days early enough so we could still enjoy the city we’re arriving at. We woke up at 6:45am to get our things together and arrived at the train station at 8am.

The Amsterdam train station was small enough that we didn’t have to spend too much time figuring out where we had to go. We grabbed both breakfast and lunch because we weren’t sure what the lunch situation would be like on the train.

Most trains will have a bistro cart on the train, where you can order water, sodas, as well as snacks and sandwiches. Some are more plenished than others so we always tried to get food ahead of time before getting on a train.

After we arrived at the train station though, we overheard the intercom saying that our train didn’t have any first class cars, which is where our seats were so we didn’t technically have seats.

Note on first class cars vs. second class: Ryan booked all of our trains before our trip. Sometimes, the first class cars were the exact same price as second class, so we bought first class. Often, there’s not much difference, except maybe a little more room.

SO with no seats we didn’t really know what to do. The intercom speaker told us to find the train manager but how were we supposed to know who was the train manager?!

Our plan was 1) get on the train 2) figure out our seats later.

After getting kicked out of two different sets of seats, we finally found some that weren’t reserved. Those seats also ended up being behind a couple who had one son that were very…annoyed with each other. They kept heavily sighing and practically yelling at each other from across seats. It was awkward.

Other than that, the train was great! Haha. It sounds like it was miserable but it really wasn’t.

We arrived around 3:30 and met up with our friend Devashish (hi Devashish!), who was one of Ryan’s fraternity brothers. I’ll admit, it wasn’t a random meet up. He found out we were doing a Europe trip when he visited over Thanksgiving and then planned his own trip and we decided to meet up in Berlin.

We made our way to the hotel, a Hampton Inn that was west of Berlin proper, and dropped off our bags.

Ryan and I got to squeeze on a twin bed for the couple of nights…what fun!

Devashish knew of the oldest restaurant in Berlin, Zur Letzten Instanz, so we decided to go there for dinner and of course, beer.

Ryan and I both got the fried duck and oh.my.gosh I want this meal as my last. It has roasted red cabbage, potatoes, mushrooms and tomatoes. It was AMAZING.

Devashish got the boiled pork knuckle, which is also popular in Germany. It was massive!

After the most amazing meal ever, we walked to a beer garden that was close to the zoo. Devashish had came from Munich and he was all about the beer gardens and that’s basically what you do in Germany.

Devashish introduced us to radler beer, which is essentially beer and lemonade mixed together. Quite easy to drink a lot of these…

We talked and people watched for a while and eventually walked back to the hotel to crash.

June 29—Berlin

Wednesday we left the hotel around 8:30am to get breakfast and coffee before a full day ahead of us.

We went to Bagco and properly fueled with coffee and chocolate crossiants. When in Europe!

Then we made our way to the Holocaust Memorial. This museum, which is free, was built in 2005. For 2 euros, you can do the audio tour, which I would highly recommend.

Hearing all of the stories of different families and seeing videos and pictures of all of these people who went through such an awful, horrendous time was sobering.

To even think that something like this actually happened is horrifying. I would highly recommend doing the tour, and spend the extra 2 euros for the audio.

These concrete slabs were outside of the museum. According to Wikipedia, they were designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

After spending time at the Memorial, we walked to Brandenberg gate and then to Museum Island. It was raining on and off as we walked, but eventually it cleared up.

We only had time to do one of the museums (if we wanted to fit in another beer garden), so we randomly picked the Staatliche Museum.

Excerpt from their website (because an art writer, I am not):

The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin), housed in historical buildings, constitute a Universal Museum for the preservation, research and mediation of treasures of art and culture of the entire history of humanity. Their collections embrace the areas of European and extra- European art, archaeology and ethnology.

The museum took a few hours to walk through and once we were done I was starving. Several people told us we had to get doner kebabs while in Germany, so around 2:30 we headed out to find some!

Doner kebabs are kind of like gyros, except more vegetables and a different sauce than tzaiki.

Once we were full of delicious doner kebabs, we walked around until we found another beer garden to hang out in.

I can’t remember the name of the place we picked, but we stayed for several hours just drinking and talking. Europeans in general just seem to chill and hang out a lot more than Americans do. It’s common for meals to last much longer, which I loved. I really want to try and incorporate more of that lifestyle here.

After hanging there for several hours, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for basically the event that led us to Berlin in the first place….the Coldplay concert!!

We didn’t end up getting seats together, so we ate bratwursts outside of the venue before going in.

The convert was held at the Olympic stadium, which was cool to see. They also had people walking around with beer backpacks that could serve you beer, instead of going up to the concessions. So cool!

The concert was, of course, AMAZING. Coldplay is my favorite band and this was my second time seeing them. Ah, tears come to my eyes just thinking about how awesome it was. Haha. Such a nerd.

As you walked in, you were handed these wrist bands that would change colors with the songs and beats of music. It was so fun to see the entire stadium light up.

They played Don’t Panic, which isn’t one of their super popular songs, but I LOVE it so I was super happy.

One thing we learned about concerts in Europe (at least I’m assuming it’s all of Europe) was that they don’t do encores! Ryan and I waited a bit and then realized an encore was definitely not happening so we begrudgingly left.

The subway back to the city was insane. Trying to get 80,000 people back into Berlin with only a few trains running obviously took a while.

The subways were only going part of the way back to Berlin, so we all had to get off and walk the rest of the way. All in all, it was an awesome night!

Next stop: Switerland!

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We had to wake up at 4am to get on a train to get to the Luton airport. We decided to take the short flight to Amsterdam instead of taking trains to get there.

The Luton airport is the smaller airport in London, which was nice, however we weren’t exactly clear on where we should go. We checked our bags because we heard they are pretty strict about the liquids. Checking in was fine but they told us to go to  get our passport stamped and we didn’t have enough time to ask “uh where do we do that?”

Anyways, we figured it out and then went through security.

I don’t know if all of European airports are set up this way or if it’s just in the UK but at both the Luton and Heathrow airport they have a holding area where you wait for your gate to be announced. Your gate isn’t announced until 30 minutes to an hour before your flight leaves, so you don’t wait by the gate like you do in American airports. Interesting for sure!

We arrived in Amsterdam at 10am and immediately went to our Airbnb to drop off our bags.

Rows and rows of bikes greeted us right outside of the train station.

Once we arrived to our Airbnb around 11:30 and our host gave us a little tour and went over a few things about being out in Amsterdam.

As we were walking to our place, I spotted out a cafe that had outdoor seating and I said to Ryan “I want to go there for lunch!” so we headed back out to a place called Teun to get coffee and lunch.

After getting properly fueled with sandwiches and coffee, we walked around for a while. One thing I loved about Amsterdam was that it was small enough for us to walk from one end of town to the other, but still quite large. They have a population of 700,000 people and 600,000 bikes! 

We got chocolates at a little shop and then sat and people watched at the National Monument.

We thought we had walked through the popular Red Light district, but we didn’t see much….of what you usually see. If you don’t already know, Amsterdam is primarily known for two things: Marijuana and legalized prostitution.

Neither of those things we are into obviously, but there is so much more to the city that you don’t even really notice those things.

They have what are called “coffeeshops” that are definitely…not coffeeshops, so be warned before you go. Coffeeshops is where you can buy and smoke marijuana. There are plenty of coffeeshops but besides just walking past and smelling the smoke, it wasn’t really an issue. We never saw anyone or anything super crazy and it’s pretty contained.

The Red Light district is where many of the prostitution places are located. We thought at this time we were walking through it but we definitely weren’t. More on that later.

We eventually made our way to our cheese and wine tasting we had scheduled. Wine and cheese? Yes please.

There were about 20 of us doing the wine tasting, I think one group was a bachelor party. English is commonly spoken in Amsterdam, so the tasting was done all in English. It included a cheesy (ha) video and all. 

After our tasting, we headed to In de Wildemaan, which was a highly recommended bar/pub. We wanted to order some beers to sip on, but through our mistake and a language barrier, we got this strange tasting carbonated beer-ish drink. Yes, that’s the technical term.

Actually, we tried ordering two of these, not realizing they were the size of wine bottles. Thankfully the bartender suggested us to start with one

Unfortunately, we couldn’t finish it. We were sitting in the back of the bar and it was really hot and stuff and we just couldn’t choke it down. Lesson learned!

Then we were off to find dinner. Ryan and I love Thai food so we decided to try and find a Thai place. It had been kind of colder and rainy, so Thai sounded good.

The place we went to was called Kinnaree and it did not disappoint! They gave us these delicious little wraps before our entrees were served that were really fresh and ginger-y tasting. 

We got the Chicken Massaman and the Beef Panang curry. Those are our two go-tos and hardly ever disappoint us. They were so good!

June 26—Amsterdam

Our first activity of the day was a country side bike tour. I apparently way underestimated the time it would take us to walk there so we had to walk quite quickly to make it on time.

We grabbed crossiants at a random place on the way and omg it ended up being one of the most delicious croissants we had during our entire trip!

It was filled with prosciutto and a little cheese and it was so buttery and flaky. The perfect crossiant in my opinion. Can we make crossiants a thing here in the U.S.?

We arrived on time and got set up with our bikes. They gave us a little talk before heading out about biking in Amsterdam. 

Biking is some serious stuff there. You have to be careful to watch out for bikers more than you ever would for cars. Natives to Amsterdam can get quite angry if you are too slow or cut in front of them on your bike.

Our bike tour was about 4 hours. We rode a little in the city and then went out to the countryside.

We had a few other groups on the tour with us. A South African couple, two girls from Singapore, and then a mom and her three children who were 13-14 years old from New Jersey.

The family from New Jersey was…interesting. When we all introduced ourselves to the group, she said they were from “Jersey.” Not the U.S., United States, the States…or even NEW Jersey. Just Jersey. Ummmm not everyone in the world knows what Jersey is but okay.

Then later on in the tour, we stopped at a little cheese shop to do a cheese tasting. Apparently one of the daughters was vegan (she made it very well known) and refused to go inside. Which it was a very small cottage type house and it wasn’t like the entire thing was focused on the cheese. There was also a part where we saw how the wooden shoes were made and their was a gift store too.

Ryan and I ended up purchasing some of the smoked cheese because it was some of the best I’ve ever had. We still haven’t opened it yet .

We made other random stops along the way, one including the location where the rowing part of the Olympics took place in 1928!

We also saw some of Picasso’s work in Vondelpark!

After our tour, we walked to a cafe called Bakers and Roasters to enjoy the weather and sit outside to enjoy coffee. Yes, we drank a ton of coffee on this trip.

We overheard a girl say she was from Texas so we chatted with her a bit. She actually just moved to Amsterdam from Dubai for work. Still, such a small world to sit next to someone from the same state as you!

After we were rejuvenated with coffee, we walked around the city more. We made our way to the proper Red Light district and we realized we definitely were not in the right spot area. You kind of know when you are there, if you know what I mean.

We never felt unsafe or anything, though we did make it a point to walk around during the day. Not sure what it looks like at night though.

Then we were hungry, so what does one do when you’re hungry and on vacation? You get a waffle!

It was nice to just sit by the water, talk, and enjoy our chocolate covered waffle.

Up next was a gin tasting at Wynand Fockink.

There was a bit of confusion with our gin tasting. It was a very small bar area and it seemed like people were just walking up and ordering drinks, and not participating in a tour.

Eventually we made our way through the crowd and asked about the tour and tasting. The bartender kind of looked at us funny and then said, “Well this is interesting! Our normal guy who does the tours isn’t here so…I guess we’ll wing it!”

There was another American couple that was right by us who also had tickets for the tasting so we laughed with each other about how weird and awkward this all was.

They American couple had 4 other people with them, relatives of one of them. We stood around for a while and eventually we had a “tour” which consisted of one room where the gin is distilled.

After that, we did a tasting but they still had to serve drinks at the bar and it was quite crowded. None of us really knew what was going on but either way we had fun getting to know the other group.

I’m not a huge gin fan, but some of the sips we had were good. Several of the drinks were waaaay too strong for me.

The tasting took a lot longer than anticipated so we were starving after. We stopped a random place on the way home and I’ll admit it wasn’t the best meal we’ve had. I ended up getting sauteed mushrooms and croquettes and Ryan got wings and fries.

June 27—Amsterdam

By this day, we were starting to feel a little run down. We were going to do a free walking tour they have in Amsterdam but decided to do our own thing and walk around on our own.

We walked to a place down the street from our Airbnb called Bagels and Beans, where we got…you guessed it bagels and coffee.

We had bought some packaged cheese during our bike tour and we started wondering if we were going to be able to take it into Switzerland. Switzerland isn’t part of the EU and they can be very particular about what types of food you can bring into other countries so we were like uhhh…what if we need to eat all of this cheese before going into Switzerland?! Thankfully we figured out that we could

We eventually made our way to our canal tour that came as a part of our wine tasting package. It was rainy so we were kind of dreading it at first, but then realized the boats are covered so we didn’t get rained on too much. 

After the tour, we set up shop at an Irish place where we had drinks and lunch. It was nice to just sit and hang out.

When in Amsterdam, you gotta get Heineken!

We gave ourselves our own little walking tour for the day and just was enjoying the sites. We walked by the Anne Frank house to see how long the line was and it was ridiculously long so we decided it wasn’t quite worth it. I was disappointed but I didn’t want to spend an entire afternoon waiting in line.

Later in the day we did the Van Gogh Museum tour. I can admit that Ryan and I aren’t exactly…art people but felt like the Van Gogh museum could be interesting. We did the shorter guided tour and while the lady  who did the audio was a little odd at times, it was still enjoyable.

We overheard another group debating on whether Van Gogh painted one of the paintings standing up or sitting down. Ryan and I just laughed at that because how is that even something to debate about?!

After the tour, we got snacks and drinks at a place called Cafe de Prins, where we tried bitterballen for the first time. A friend on Facebook said we should try it as it’s a popular appetizer people order in Amsterdam.

According to Wikipedia, bitterballen are a Dutch meat-based snack, typically containing a mixture of beef or veal, beef broth, butter, flour for thickening, parsley, salt and pepper, resulting in a thick roux

It was kind of like a mashed potato ball with a mustard sauce.

After even more walking, we eventually got hungry for dinner. If you can’t already tell by now, one of our favorite ways to experience a city is through food.

We had asked our Airbnb host if she recommended a Thai place because the last place was so good and we wanted more. She suggest Rakang and it ended up being one of our favorite meals of the entire trip. And definitely the best Thai food we’ve ever had!

They gave us the crunchy pork rind-esqe snacks with a peanut butter sauce to start.

I got the Paneang curry with duck and omg it was the best. I hardly ever order duck but for some reason I just felt like it was going to be a good place to try. Mmmm.

Ryan got the Massaman curry with beef. Also totally amazing.

After our full day out, we were ready to crash so we walked back to the Airbnb and headed to bed early. We had an early morning the following day…off to Berlin! 

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First, I’ll say we took about 6 months to plan this trip, which I think was the perfect amount of time for the length of our trip.

Ryan planned nearly all of the transportation and where we were staying and I planned most of the day-to-day activities of what we do in each city. Breaking it up in this way helped ease some of the planning, so we didn’t feel too overwhelmed with everything we had to do.

We knew we wanted to plan the entire trip ourselves. We aren’t really into the whole guided tour thing, and it also ends up being cheaper if you plan it yourself. It does, however, take some work to plan everything out (especially figuring out what train passes to use). I’ll try to convince Ryan to write a post on figuring out the best train passes. It definitely took a lot of research!

Alright…let’s get into our first city…and last city! I’ll cover the beginning in this post and I’ll cover the end of our trip in London in a follow up post.

June 22 – Flight to London

We flew out of DFW on an 11am flight to Detroit. Yes, we moved all the way to Dallas, one of the largest cities in the U.S., and we still had to go to Detroit to get to London.

We tried to get a regular Uber to the airport but the only Uber available was an Uber select which is the most expensive. Oh well, we had places to be!

Our flight to Detroit was fine, not much to write about. We had a 3 hour layover, so we grabbed lunch and settled in for a bit. The Detroit airport (however much I do like to complain about it) does have pretty good food options. We got Mediterranean food.

Though we purchased a Delta flight, our plane was actually Virgin Atlantic, which was nice. I’ve only been on one other Virgin Atlantic flight but their planes are nice!

They gave us all kinds of goodies throughout the flight: hot towels, free drinks, headphones, eye mask, toothpaste and toothbrush, socks and two meals.

We landed at 6:30 in the morning, London time. Neither Ryan nor I slept during the flight. He watched movies and I either read or listened to podcasts. We both have a hard time sleeping on planes so we were prepared to not sleep.

Once we landed, we took the subway to Kings Cross, which was close to where our Airbnb was located.

Side note: We primarily used Airbnb in all of the cities we stayed in. All of our places were exactly what we needed. We only had one hiccup with a place (details for later) so it ended up working out great. I would definitely recommend using Airbnb aboard and I’ll probably try it here in the States too.

End side note.

When we arrived at our Airbnb, our host wasn’t exactly ready for us considering it was like 8:30am. He knew we were coming but the previous people were still there (which we knew they would be) so we just dropped off our stuff and went out to grab coffees.

We walked around, got coffee in Pret A Manger, walked some more until we found Camden Market. Camden Market is an open air market that has a bunch of little shops that have clothing, food, jewelry, art work, etc.

Horses. Eh.

We eventually got hungry for lunch so I got a falafel wrap and Ryan got a chicken tandoori wrap. Yeah…I like falafel considering I got it twice in 24 hours!

Then we walked to Parliament Hill where you are supposed to be able to see the skyline but I guess we didn’t go up high enough because we couldn’t see anything! It was a little disappointing but it was nice to walk around.

We were starting to feel tired (uhh yeah maybe because we were up for like 36 hours straight!) so we decided to take the tube (subway) back to the Airbnb and proceeded to crash for 3 hours.

Once we rallied we walked 10 minutes to an Indian restaurant called Dishoom. We used Yelp (add me!) and recommendations mostly for every place we ate.

We had to wait a little bit but they gave us free mini chai shots. Yum!

Once inside, we sat in the waiting area and ordered drinks.

For appetizers, we ordered the Lamb Samosas and it came with three different sauces. All I remember is one of the sauces was really spicy!

For entrees, I ordered the Chicken Ruby, which was essentially an Indian curry and Ryan ordered the Lamb Boti Kabab. We agreed mine was the best, but it was very spicy and Europeans don’t typically drink a lot of water so my glass was never refilled. My mouth was on fire after this!

We walked back to the Airbnb after dinner and fell asleep. It was a long day and we wanted to make sure to get up somewhat early the next day.

17,000 steps

June 23–London

We woke up 5am the next day. 5 AM PEOPLE. When we first woke up, we were like “oh man we must have slept in! It’s so bright out!” because the sun was fully up like it was noon. Come to find out…it was 5am. Neither of us could go back to sleep so we went with it.

Once we started scrolling through our phones, we realized Great Britain had voted to leave the EU the day before. Now I’ll admit, we had only learned the day before that this vote was even happening. But everyone figured it wouldn’t pass so it wasn’t made as big of a deal.

But then it happened. And the world freaked out. To be honest, it didn’t affect our trip that much, other than make our time in Great Britain a little cheaper, which I can’t complain about.

Anyways! We had breakfast at our Airbnb, which our host provided. Not all places have food for you, it just depends on the host, but we had an offering of crossiants, yogurts, fruit, and babybel cheese. It was nice!

We left around 8am to go exploring. We made our way to Big Ben, Buckingham palace, and Westminster Abbey.

The photo below was taken outside of Westminster Abbey. This is where practically every world news station was located to report on the Brexit. It was crazy!

I would highly recommend doing a tour of Westminster Abbey. You couldn’t take any photos inside, but the architecture was incredible.

Then we walked to Parliament to see the changing of the guards. We missed most of it but man there was a lot of people there!

Then we walked to get lunch at the most amazing pizza place ever. It was called Franco Manca that had sourdough pizza crust.

I got a side salad and a pizza with zucchini and white sauce, Ryan got the chorizo pizza, which we then learned that chorizo in London actually meant pepperoni!

Again, we learned I made the right choice because my pizza was THE BEST.

After our dreamy lunch, we walked around some more and got beers at a pub.

After walking around for awhile we headed back and took naps. Once we woke up, we wanted to find an English pub to have dinner at. Fish and chips were on the brain!

We had a few drinks with our Airbnb host and his friends before going out for dinner. We discussed the Brexit and they of course asked us about Trump. Interesting conversations for sure!

His friends had recommended a place called Hook for dinner so we headed there.

It was basically my heaven because I love sauces and you could order 6 different dipping sauces (!!!). Of course I had to order all of them. Bahaha.

It was a great meal, but it was way greasy and we felt like crap after. Oh well…you only live once!

We left early the next day to catch our flight to Amsterdam. See ya in the next post!

Total steps so far: 45,055. (Yes we kept track of how many steps we took via our FitBits!)

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1. We’ve had 6 straight weeks of visitors
2. I launched an online course, hosted my first webinar, and launched 3 new clients in the last month.

So, all exciting stuff! So at the end of the day, sometimes I just want to veg and watch Netflix, know what I mean?

I owe like a million updates for all of the visitors we’ve had though, so I decided to combine them all into one big post.

Alysha & Brenton

Alysha and Brenton were our first guests at the end of February. They were the first of our Milwaukee friends to come visit us, and even though the winter hasn’t been as horrible as normal, they still welcomed the Dallas weather. Alysha and I met through our previous blogs and then we all became good friends ever since!

They flew in on a Wednesday evening and we had dinner at home to keep it chill.

Thursday we had breakfast at home and then headed to Top Golf for a little golfing action. Ryan and Brenton would often golf together in Milwaukee and Top Golf is a fun place to take out-of-towners.

We took them to Torchy’s Tacos, another Texas staple, for lunch and they of course loved the queso as much as we do.

After lunch, we went shopping at some resale shops. Alysha loves shopping so I knew she would love these stores. I, on the other hand, was assuming I would not find much because I just don’t shop a lot but I ended up liking a lot of the clothes and accessories. I’m waiting to go again at the end of the spring season to get deals on some clothes.

Cane Rosso was on tap for dinner. Gosh, I love that place. If I had to eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would probably be pizza.

The next day we woke up, had breakfast and headed to the Fort Worth Stockyards.

We later met up with some friends to get drinks at H.G. Supply, which is in the Lower Greenville area of Dallas. They have an awesome rooftop bar, and even though it was cold (for Dallas), it was still enjoyable!

After that, we waited what felt like for-ev-er at Mi Cocina. But it was well worth the wait because Alysha is STILL talking about the sunset fajitas!

After a late night, only one thing would do: Breadwinners.

We apparently can’t hang like we used to though, because all we wanted to do after eating was go home and crash. Ha! We discussed everything from their upcoming wedding to American Idol contestants (because I think we’re the only people under the age of 50 watching the show…).

As our send off meal, we of course had to take them to Pecan Lodge. We also took Ashlee and Carlo here when they visited, but we love any excuse to go to Pecan Lodge.

The banana pudding is a MUST.

They had to leave early Sunday morning, so we laid low the rest of the evening on Saturday. It was so fun to have them visit and I can’t wait until they come back!

Kim

Our next guest was Kim, a high school friend from home. She says she wanted to visit me, but I believe she was using me as an excuse to visit Magnolia Market in Waco

She arrived on a Saturday evening and since she is a fellow wing lover, we went to Pluckers for dinner.

Sunday we got up for brunch at Mercat Bisto, which is a French bistro in downtown Dallas. It was our first time there, and while the ambiance and decor was so cute, I’m not sure I’d go again.

After brunch, we headed to Klyde Warren Park, where we went for Ryan’s birthday in October.

We took the free trolley around downtown, which is so nice! A great way to show off the downtown area.

Monday was the big day to Waco to visit the Magnolia Market from the popular HGTV show Fixer Upper. Just as a warning to those that aren’t familiar with Waco…Magnolia Market basically IS Waco. There is nothing else in Waco. Yes, there is a college, but as far as restaurants, shopping, things to do….not much else there.

We assumed arriving around 10:30am would be early enough, because who the heck is going to Waco on a random Monday morning.

False. We were wrong. Way wrong. There were so many people waiting outside! It was insane. But the weather cooperated so all was fine.

Kim recognized Joanna’s mom (which I asked her multiple times “are you suuuure that’s her?” haha) and we even got a picture with her (which I suddenly can’t find…shoot).

They had all kinds of food trucks and a little area where kids could run around. It was so cute and quaint!

Waco is basically the place where Kim belongs because not only does it have Magnolia Market but it also is home to the Dr. Pepper Museum, which she is equally as obsessed with.

The tour is self guided so you can take it at whatever speed you’d like. It was fun to see the changes in branding over the years for Dr. Pepper (branding nerd alert).

Tuesday was a slight bummer because it rained off and on all day. Living right across the street from a mall though, we of course found something to do indoors

She left on Wednesday and then both sets of parents came to visit the weeks after that. This post is already getting mighty long so I’ll cut it short for now!

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This is a question I’m sure many of us receive often. “What do you do?” I’d dare to say it’s one of the first questions you ask someone when you first meet them.

Before, it was an easy question for me to answer because I had a “normal” job. I would say, “I work at __________ and I do ____________.” Fill in the blank, easy peasy.

Now, that’s not the case.

Let me rewind a bit to give the background as to how I got to where I am.

Three and a half years ago Ryan and I got on the debt paying train. We essentially drank the Dave Ramsey kool-aid and took it on full force. One of the reasons that kept us going was just the thought of us living like no one else and not having any sort of debt whatsoever (full disclosure, this will probably change once we buy a home because we are by no means going to pay all cash for our first house).

Another reason was to afford me the possibility of working for myself one day.

For reasons unknown to me, I’ve had it in the back of my mind to one day be my own boss. Maybe it’s from listening to entrepreneur podcasts, maybe it’s my past experiences at old jobs, or maybe I was inherently born with a desire to pave my own way…I don’t know the reason but I know it’s been nagging at me for a while now.

So when Ryan got the job opportunity down here in Dallas, it became a reality a lot sooner than I originally thought. I’m sure if we would have stayed in Milwaukee, I never would have just up and quit my job, but somehow moving across the country gave me the courage to finally try and see if I could make this work.

Oooookay. Now that you have the background story, let’s get back to the title of this post: What in the heck do I do all day?

I’ll admit, when I would read articles or listen to entrepreneur podcasts and they would say that being your own boss is not for the faint of heart and that it is a LOT of work, I kind of rolled my eyes.

I mean, how hard could it be? You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, right?

While yes, I can spend the day in my pajamas and take a class at the gym in the middle of the day…it’s not that glamourous.

And it IS a lot of freaking work. Like, I have never worked this hard in my life.

Here’s the thing: We moved to a brand new city, where we didn’t know anyone. Where I have no connections or much knowledge of how to be a small business owner.

To say the first few months were hard is an understatement.

I had no idea how to structure my day. I had a million project ideas. I needed to build a website from scratch (cuz uh, I did not want to spend money on a professional right now). I also needed to figure out simple things of moving to a new city…like knowing my way around the grocery store.

It was a lot. And Ryan was gone a lot for work, which was expected but was still lonely at times. Thank God for Murphy, he at least gave some sort of structure to my day.

Annnnnyways. The first few months were rough and hard to navigate, but I finally found my groove in January. I gave myself some yearly goals, and broke them down into monthly goals so I could have a chance of actually achieving my yearly goals.

I started going to MeetUps and meeting other small business owners.

I started networking online.

I consistently blogged on my business website.

I started submitting proposals to potential clients.

And it started clicking. I started actually getting clients. Like, real people and businesses that pay me to do what I love doing. Whaaaat?!

So I’ve typed over 600 words and I still haven’t answered the initial question of what I do. Well, it’s not the easy fill in the blank answers I used to be able to say, so here it goes. On any given day, I could be doing the following:

• Creating social media content for my clients (yes, this includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest…and all of the other million platforms out there). This includes creating the images, writing the text, finding article to share, responding to comments, etc.
• Creating social media content for my business (yes, this includes Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Periscope)
• Interacting and responding back to people who have commented on any of the social platforms I manage
• Creating and maintaining advertising on social platforms for clients
• Creating social media strategies for clients
• Blog/article writing for clients
• Blog for my business blog
• Writing article for other websites
• Website maintenance for clients
• Sending proposals to potential clients
• Tracking my business finances/expenditures
• DOING MY OWN TAXES. UGH. THE WORST.
• Doing pesky business related tasks (registering an LLC, filling out the right business paperwork, etc)
• Going to MeetUps (either to meet potential clients or to learn)
• Meeting with other small business owners to discuss all things solopreneur (this almost always includes drinking wine)
• Write email newsletters for clients
• Write email newsletters for my business
• Responding to emails
• Writing landing page content
• Make sure I’m up-to-date on all of the social platforms (which are always changing. constantly)
• Monthly/quarterly/yearly business planning and adjusting while I go
• Participating in Twitter chats/Facebook groups to promote my business
• Maintaining my business website, making sure everything is up-to-date and constantly making it better
• Phone calls/skype calls with clients/potential future clients
• And finally….my latest project that I am SoExcitedAboutOmg…creating an online course! (which has it’s own long list of things I do)

I primarily work with other small businesses/entrepreneurs who need help in managing their social media accounts or creating a social media strategy for their business, so if you know any Etsy shop owners, local restaurants…any type of small business that needs social media or marketing help, send them my way!

So…as you can see, the question of “What do you do?” isn’t as easy to answer in one sentence. Because in reality, I do everything.

This is a pretty accurate description of what goes on in my head during any given day:

(image source)

Though it has many ups and downs, and is certainly the hardest thing I’ve ever done so far in my life, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Any questions? 

The post “So…What Do You Do?” appeared first on The Lynns.

For whatever reason, this February flew by! Hence no blog updates.

Let’s quickly run down what happened in February, and then we’ll get to the most exciting part: Our trip to New Orleans!

• I started working with a new freelancing client
• Ryan was sick for like, 3 weeks
• We watched the Super Bowl at a friend’s place and was creeped out by the puppy-monkey-baby commercial
• We tried this recipe, and this, and this and they were all SO good
• We opened IRAs (ugh, adulting)
• I took Murphy to the vet twice (ear infection, poor buddy)
• We celebrated Valentine’s Day with a fancy dinner at The Grill on the Alley (so. much. steak)
• We said goodbye to two friends who are moving to California (wah!)

Whew, looks like we were kind of busy now that I look back. We also had Wisconsin friends come visit, but I’ll leave that as a separate post because we did so much!

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the goods of this post: New Orleans!

With being able to work from pretty much anywhere (a GREAT bonus), I was able to accompany Ryan on one of his work trips to New Orleans.

Ryan travels quite a bit for work, but most times it’s to visit customers. That type of trip wouldn’t make sense for me to go on, because well…I don’t really have a desire to go to middle of nowhere Texas to hang in a hotel room. Plus, we have to pay for Murphy to be watched.

But this trip, he was going for a conference with several other co-workers so I tagged along!

We left early on a Monday morning. We decided to drive because we didn’t want to pay for a flight for me. Plus, we hadn’t road tripped together in a while! I worked on some projects during the drive.

Unfortunately, it rained basically the entire time. Story of our lives driving together. An 8 hour drive stinks a whole lot more when it’s raining.

Either way we powered through and made it around dinner time. We checked into our hotel, which was the Bourbon Orleans hotel which was right off Bourbon St.

Then we headed to a place everyone suggested: Pat O’ Briens!

Pat O’Briens is a where the famous “Hurricane” drink began, which is essentially a really strong rum drink. We of course had to order one, but I ended up not being able to drink much of mine. Too sweet and TOO strong.

We started dinner with fried alligator because…when in Louisiana? Ha. It was okay, though I’m not sure I would order it again. Too chewy for my taste.

For dinner, I ordered a Muffaletta because omg I love olives. Ryan doesn’t like olives so I try to get my fix when we go out to eat.

Ryan ordered the crawfish etouffe, which was okay but he said he probably wouldn’t get again. I’m not sure we are crawfish people.

After dinner, we went to a place called the Cat’s Meow which is known as “the best karaoke bar in the world.” We were there for the people watching mostly. The Keller Williams Realty group was also having a conference in town and those middle aged woman LOVE their karaoke.

Tuesday we woke up early so we could go to the best place in the French Quarter: Cafe du Monde. Also known as THE place to get beignets.

If you’re ever visiting New Orleans, my advice is to go early in the morning for beignets. We sat outside and didn’t have to wait at all! We went around 8am.

Can these be delivered to me right now? Kthanks.

After we were done stuffing our faces with delicious beignets, did some work, and then went to the convention center where the conference was being held.

I did more work in the lobby area and then we walked around the convention.

For lunch, my uncle had recommended Cochon Butcher for delicious sandwiches.

I ordered the Gambino sandwich and the house made chips, which were both so delicious. They have a location in Nashville too, so maybe we’ll hit it up again when we go to Nashville next month!

By this time, we had learned that it’s basically impossible to find a vegetable in the French Quarter. My body was yelling at me for some type of veggie so I looked up a juice place nearby and we walked there.

We stopped at the Pulp and Grind and it was a great little coffee and juice shop. Apparently that juice was just what I needed because I was so energetic after! We went back to the hotel and Ryan napped while I was buzzing off the juice and finishing up some work for the day.

For dinner, we got dressed up and met up with several of Ryan’s coworkers along with some distributors his company works with. We had an entire room to ourselves at Muriel’s and the meal was delicious.

We headed back to the hotel around 9:30 and while the guys went out, I decided to stay back at the hotel and read. I can’t handle two nights out anymore!

The next morning, we woke up and hit the ground running walking again. Stanley’s was a short walk away and it had pretty good ratings on Yelp. One thing I noticed about looking up any restaurant on Yelp was that nearly every restaurant had at least 4 stars, most having 4.5 or 5! I suppose you have to be a really good restaurant to stay in the French Quarter.

I ordered a latte and the Eggs Stella, which was soft-shell crab and the other usual eggs benedict ingredients. It was only okay, but I think it’s because I discovered I don’t like soft shell crab.

After breakfast, Ryan, his co-worker, and I walked all up and down Royal street, popping into different shops and markets.

For lunch, (gosh it seems like all we did was eat! ha) we decided to walk to Mother’s. Mother’s is the place to get po’boys and sandwiches and was highly recommended from various people.

Ryan and I each split a roast beef and shrimp po’boy. I think the roast beef was actually my favorite!

We ended up getting iced coffees from Spitfire (SO GOOD) and watched a street band. The po’boy basically put me in a coma so I needed a nap after that!

We rallied later in the evening and had a drink at Saints & Sinners, which is Channing Tatum’s bar on Bourbon St. Apparently we didn’t get to experience it to the fullest because they only have the go-go dancers on the weekends.

We both were feeling kind of sluggish and rich food was not sounding good at all. We ended up at a somewhat sketchy greasy diner for dinner. Ryan got some scrambled eggs and I got a BLT. We learned that Beyonce’s sister apparently lived down the street, though I somewhat doubt because this was not a part of town she would live in.

We walked back to the hotel and met with Ryan’s co-worker for drinks at the hotel bar, which had a live band playing.

We called it a night early because we were all feeling exhausted. I can’t keep up with New Orleans!

On our last day, I had to get Spitfire coffee again because it was so good the day before. We even ended up buying some of their coffee beans to take home with us.

All in all it was a great trip and I’m so thankful to be able to take my work on the road.

The post New Orleans 2016 appeared first on The Lynns.

Last weekend

Fridays we usually keep it chill and stay in. Long gone are the weeks where I would go out and about every Friday night. I’d rather stay at home in my pjs, have a nice dinner, and catch up on some Netflix.

We’ve been doing a “cleanse” of some sort (though it’s not really a cleanse, it’s just cleaning up our diet) since the beginning of January which makes eating out a little difficult so we’ve been making most meals at home. Last Friday I made this Moroccan Meatball recipe and served it over mashed cauliflower and roasted broccoli. It was SO good. It was even better the next day!

We also finished planning our route for our Europe trip (!!!), but I’ll share more details of that in another post.

Saturday we met some friends at Top Golf, which is this golf complex where you make a game out of hitting golf balls. They also have drinks and bar food, plus comfy seating and heaters for when it’s cold outside.

It was fun! I’m absolutely terrible and have no idea what I’m doing but I still liked it.

Sunday was spent not doing much. We both did some work, relaxed, watched Homeland (omg we are so obsessed and can’t stop watching), prepped for the week ahead.

Freelance life

My solopreneur business is starting to take off a bit. I don’t really plan to discuss much about it here because, well…I’m not sure it’s that interesting? Ha. Though at times it can be overwhelming, frustrating, and I can feel totally clueless at times (just being honest), it’s been totally worth it so far. I love what I’m doing and I’m loving the people I’m working with.

Miscellaneous

The weather has been awesome this week! It got to 67 today! On January 28th! I’m sorry Wisconsin friends.

It does get cold here though. And Murphy hates the cold just like his mama. Every single time I turn on the space heater in the office, he plops down right in front of it and doesn’t move. Every. Single. Time. What a kook.

Ryan surprised me with a dutch oven last week! If it’s not already apparent, I love cooking and we didn’t have a dutch oven (mainly because they are so gosh dang expensive!) but he found this one on super sale on Amazon (and it’s not a Le Creuset…ha) and bought it! Love the red color too.

K, I think that’s it for now!

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Currently I’m…

Wanting: More friends to come visit us in Dallas! We have a set of friends coming in February (Hi Alysha!) but I want more to come. Book your flights, friends!

Eating: Pretty healthy! Normally after the holidays we like to clean up our diet a little bit and we always feel so much better. I’ve been trying to plan meals that we look forward to instead of thinking “ugh we have to eat this plain chicken breast and broccoli again.” I love planning meals (seriously, if someone would pay me to do this for them I totally would. Heck, I would probably just do it for free) so it’s been fun finding new recipes to try.

Reading: A lot of articles on how to create a child theme for WordPress. Because by golly I cannot figure it out to save my life and I refuse to pay someone to do it for me. (Update: I wrote this a couple of days ago and FINALLY figured it out!!!)

Watching: White Collar on Netflix. Ryan and I usually have a few shows going on at the same time that we like to watch, but we’ve been really into White Collar lately.

Thinking: How in the heck is the powerball up to 1.4 BILLION DOLLARS?!

Listening: Coldplay’s new album because uh, if you haven’t heard, we’re seeing them this summer in Berlin.

Feeling: Very grateful to be self-employed. It’s a lot of hard work (I promise it’s not just sitting around watching TV and eating bon-bons all day), but it feels awesome to be the boss.

Making: Homemade dairy free ranch and homemade mayo. The ranch ended up tasting quite good. I made the mayo but have yet to try it so hopefully it’s good!

Wishing: I could figure out a to-do list/journaling/bucket list system that works. I’ve heard of the Bullet Journaling concept but it seems a little intense right now.

Loving: That it’s not 5 degrees like it is in Milwaukee. I’M SORRY MILWAUKEE FRIENDS. But, I just can’t help it

Trying: To finish up the planning of our Europe trip. Our (very) rough plan is to fly into London, then go to Amsterdam, then Berlin, and then somehow get to Limoges, France for the Tour de France. Yeah, it’s going to be an awesome trip.

Smelling: This cashmere plum candle from Target. The best.

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This year for Christmas was a little different. If I’m being honest though, we haven’t had two Christmas’ that have been alike so in a way this was exactly like every other year…different.

Since we just moved here in September, we knew we most likely wouldn’t go back home for the holidays. We were at least able to see some family though!

Christmas Eve

We made a rookie mistake on Christmas Eve and went to Central Market (grocery store) mid-morning. It was a madhouse! Central Market is set up in a way that there is basically only one way to go through the store. So it’s difficult to go to just one aisle that you need stuff in and then leave.

We were picking up food to have for our Christmas Eve dinner, and ended up picking up some pre-made dinner items, since we were heading out of town the next day.

We each picked our own protein (Ryan had chicken, I had salmon), green beans, caesar salad, mac and cheese, and some leftover roasted potatoes we had in the fridge.

We also busted open a cherry wine we got while vacationing in Michigan earlier this year.

Before dinner we tried another new church. Being it was Christmas Eve, we will probably go again as Christmas services can be a little different than regular services.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day we packed up, left Murphy behind at camp (sob), and drove 4 hours to Beaumont, Texas. Ryan has an uncle in Beaumont so we spent Christmas day with them. I hadn’t had much time with this side of the family so it was nice getting to know everyone.

I also had my first Buc-ee’s experience! To people outside of Texas, this may not seem like much, but it is a right of passage for Texans!

Buc-ee’s is a gas station but….it’s gigantic. I mean it is MASSIVE. It has pretty much all your general gas station snacks, but also house-made fudge, hot sandwiches, healthier snacks & food, house-made jerky, plus an entire other section for Texas decor.

Over the course of 3 days we ended up there 3 times! Ha. I was quite impressed with the roast beef sandwich I got for lunch.

The weather on Christmas day was incredible too. 80 degrees! Don’t worry, by Sunday it dropped 40 degrees.

We spent Christmas evening talking and watching The Santa Clause (gotta watch it every year to see my doppelganger!)

Saturday we left Beaumont and traveled 3 hours to Austin, to visit another uncle.

This will probably be the one and only time we drive through Houston without much traffic.

As soon as we arrived, we headed out to Hops and Grains, a local brewery.

This particular brewery couldn’t technically sell you beer, so you had to buy the glass and they “gave” you the beer for free. Odd, right? They said it had to do with a neighborhood association not giving them permission to sell.

We had chicken tortilla soup back at the house for dinner and talked for hours. Another great evening getting to know Ryan’s family.

Sunday morning we woke up and had breakfast and then got on the road. It rained on and off the entire way home.

While we were gone, there had been a tornado that touched down in Garland/Rowlett, Texas, which is 25-30 minutes away from where we are in Dallas. I know the news had reported “tornados in Dallas” but they technically didn’t touch down here.

We know some people that live in Rowlett but thankfully they are okay. The photos I’ve seen of the damage are heartbreaking. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who are out there.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing Christmas!

The post Christmas 2015 appeared first on The Lynns.

1. It gets hot. Like, no, really hot. It was 97 degrees on October 14. NINETY SEVEN DEGREES ON OCTOBER 14. I’m told this is unusual weather this time of year, but I think people are just trying to make me feel better. I don’t mind that it’s hot. It probably seems like my above statement implies otherwise but my goodness, I would much rather be hot than freezing cold. See ya later -19 degrees. (I do realize that 97 is not the hottest it gets here…just leave me be).

2. People are genuinely nice down south. On my first day here, 3 store employees asked me how my day was. When I walk past people, they smile at me. People just…start conversations out of nowhere. It’s refreshing.

3. Something that’s not bigger in Texas? It’s lanes on the tollway. Actually, it’s lanes anywhere really. Which is confusing because overall there are more bigger vehicles.

4. There are SO MANY RESTAURANTS. Seriously. Like, within a 5 mile radius of us we have countless fast food restaurants, several bakeries, thai, indian, seafood, bbq (obvi), delis, pizza, italian…literally anything you want you can find.

5. The airport is gigantic. It’s like…5 airports in one. It definitely beats Milwaukee’s airport for two reasons: better food options and FREE WIFI. Yes, Milwaukee, stop being cheap and let the traveling people have their wifi!

6. We have to pay attention to hurricanes and hurricane season. Right before we were leaving to go to Punta Cana a few weeks ago, Hurricane Patricia was hitting Mexico pretty hard, which meant we got rain all. day. long. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rain so much in my life. Parking garages were collapsing because of the weight of the water (thankfully not ours!!).

7. I am never leaving. Why, you may ask? Because I feel like I went around the world 14 times to 1) get a driver’s license, 2) get my car registered, and 3) get my car titled here. The government websites were not helpful at all (shocker) and I refuse to do this again in a different state.

8. They play country songs during Zumba. Yes, I had to do the Cotton Eye Joe dance during a ZUMBA class. Not sure how I feel about this.

9. They have free valet parking at a lot of restaurants. I associate valet parking with “paying somebody $25 to park my car because I’m lazy” so this is totally new to me. I hate paying for parking so I’ve hardly ever paid for valet. Here it’s mandatory at a lot of places. It’s nice, but also feels slightly ridiculous for someone to park my car when I can walk 10 feet and get it myself.

10. I think we’re going to like it here.

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