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Archive for the ‘Travels’ Category

Melbourne Weekend

19 November 2012

Last week I spent a couple of days in Melbourne with the very lovely and talented Kirbee Lawler. We packed up our Blythes and headed out, with Blythecon and Melbourne antiquing high on the agenda. Here are some highlights from the long weekend we spent there.

My delicious Breakfast at Canteen, off flinders lane, complete with adorable mini milk bottle.

Kirbees crazy hot chocolate from Slow Poke on Brunswick Street.

My Lord of the Fries “Nuggets” and Chips Snackbox. Yes it really was as sickeningly good as it looks.

Kirbees’ first Daiso trip! Everything $2.80, imported from Japan. Seek it out if you haven’t already!

The amazing Caldera Skull Couple at Amor Y Locura on Gertrude Street.

Visiting beautiful shops such as Lady Petrova. Think unicorns, kittens and Caitlin Shearer dresses!

Eating ice cream in Fed Square during the diwali festival, at sunset. Lovely!

Lining up our Blythes and purchasing goodies made by adorable and talented people!

Seeing Christinas’ (aka Jamfancy!) amazing Blythe dresses on show and meeting so many talented and lovely people, who all love Blythe as much as we do. It was so nice that what could have been a very disappointing day (due to blythecon being a tad disorganised shall we say?), turned out wonderfully fun due to the company around us.

After Melbourne we road tripped to Daylesford, which was super fun and perfect weather for a spot of exploring.

We visited Lark store in Daylesford, which was full of colour and fun things.

We scrounged through Bazaars, antique shops and vintage markets gathering goodies.

Then watched a pretty sunset and photographed ducks by a cute little lake.

We spent our last day visiting another Mill Market (like the one at Daylesford, pictured blurily above) on a quick trip through Ballarat and Werribee, then finally we were home! Thanks Melbourne, we’ll see you again sometime. Kx

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Copenhagen

26 October 2012

We arrived in Copenhagen on a particularly drizzly afternoon, but were greeted by the prettiest buildings and a great little apartment we rented through Airbnb.

This cute and super cozy little apartment was owned by a Copenhagen local and we thoroughly enjoyed staying here. It was much smaller and more “lived in” than the others we rented, but it was homely and had an amazing panda mural on the kitchen wall.

The area we stayed in had an abundance of vintage shops, mostly filled with lots of homewares. I found the vintage in Copenhagen and Sweden mostly out of my price range unfortunately, but it was lovely to look!

And again, there were so many beautiful shop windows! This stamp display outside a shop in the city centre caught my eye.

And the beautiful Scandinavian designs continued inside. This was a cushion display inside a deptartment store, I love the colours!

And these beautiful bunting ceramics. I was desperate to take some home, but that would have been very impractical!

I left these two beautiful (but ill-fitting) 1950′s dresses behind in Episode vintage.

But did buy this one!

And on the last day spent in town, we visited Copenhagen Zoo. I loved this little guy, called a Mara.

And this funny one, a prairie dog!

As always there was a big kids section at the zoo, and of course the bunnies were my highlight.

We also loved these amazing Zoo posters!

And may have even purchases some mini versions for ourselves. Kx

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Rotterdam

12 October 2012

Rotterdam! What a sweet little city. I had all intentions of visiting this place last year when we spent time in Amsterdam, (being only an hour away by train) but I ended up running out of time. Which is probably a good thing because this time around we had a nice long weekend to spend exploring and much more time to spend with some very lovely “locals”.

This is the breakfast we ate nearly every day at an adorable cafe called Picknic, who also did great coffee! Hurrah!

And these are the lovely locals we met in Rotterdam that I mentioned earlier. I stole this photo from Trudys’ amazing blog because the only photo of them I had from our trip was not blog worthy. But Tom has an equally great blog too, where he writes about both their travels, life in Rotterdam and all sorts of lovely things like that. I suggest you check them both out, be inspired and suffer a little jealousy.

And speaking of Rotterdam locals, another reason I wanted to visit Rotterdam was to see Lisas‘ super cute little shop, Elle Aime!

And it didn’t disappoint, this cute little space was choc-full of adorable little things made by locals and far away creatives! And Lisa was such a lovely person, I am so glad I had the chance to met her in person.

Here’s another little peek at the rest of the little shops in the Rotab Style Centre. Each space gets a little ground floor “shop” area and above that they have space for storage, a sewing space, a desk or a studio. It’s such a great little setup, I only wish it existed in Sydney.
While we happened to be in town, the World of Witte De With Festival was happening, a sort of street event with arts, music, food and special events. We went to one of the night street parties happening on Witte de Withstraat, and it was a little crazy to say the least!
I don’t think I’ve ever walked (shoved, struggled my way) through such a huge crowd in my life. It seemed everyone in Rotterdam had shown up for a beer and a dance. So much fun!
As part of the street party the shops and galleries were open till late. It was great being able to meander through the streets and see everything happening. How great are these cat chairs that in no way could come home with me!?
The last day we spent in Rotterdam we borrowed Trudy and Toms’ bikes and went for a ride around the city.
Trudy recommended we visit Het park, which was SO incredibly pretty. They had cute little chair swings, biking paths and greenery galore!
We met some ducks and visited this cute little house.
And on our way out we spied some crazy people dangling from a tower!
Another Rotterdam highlight was this cute little cafe right near central station that we visited called Lebkov, who did ridiculously good sandwiches and coffee.
And finally these amazing cube houses were a sight to see! It’s kind of crazy seeing them in the middle of a huge intersection. Apparently the people who live in them get vertigo and could you imagine trying to arrange furniture! I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Kx
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Belgium

10 October 2012

After we left Amsterdam we had a whirlwind two days in Belgium and stayed in beautiful little town called Halle. This is a little picture of our adorable hotel from the breakfast table.

And this one of the waffles we ate on arrival. Let me just tell you, if you’re not a fan of cream, I wouldn’t plan a visit to Belgium. Even our coffees came with the good stuff piled on top!

The highlight of Belgium for me was our little guided tour of Bruges. Such a beautiful place!

We even booked tickets to catch one of these boat tours, but sadly and quite literally “missed the boat”.
It was also a perfect day weather wise, which is always a plus!
We managed to fit in a visit to The Chocolate Line a well known Bruges chocolate shop, famous for it’s extra curricular chocolate activities and delicious chocolate delicacies.
  This giant egg was rather Willy Wonkerish and cool!
And here is Trev enjoying one of the extra curricular chocolate activities. Chocolate snorting. I wasn’t convinced but apparently it was amazing. Go figure.
And on the second day of our Belgium trip we visited Brussels briefly, on a day that was a little less lovely weather wise. And by visited I mean spend half a day searching out vintage shops, obviously!
We also found the “wee” man!
And an amazing old vintage homewares shop with a real deer head so big I had no idea they even grew to that size! Poor deer.
and we also found some creepy paintings, old signs, dozens of chairs and loads of interesting european artifacts!
And there was just enough time to eat one more waffle, this one was by far the best of all we sampled! But before we knew it, it was time to head back to the Netherlands for the weekend! Kx
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Amsterdam Adventures

2 October 2012

We’re finally home from our epic trip to Europe! This time we travelled to Amsterdam, Belgium, Rotterdam, Sweden, Copenhagen and Berlin. It was a three week trip visiting lots of new places and I must say even though it was amazing and fun, I’m so glad to be home. Here are my highlights of Amsterdam!

Huge “I Amsterdam” sculpture at the airport when we arrived, 30 hours of travel later.

The lovely Zandvoort, where we stayed. It’s right on the north sea, and extremely beautiful. The dutchies go crazy for this place! One 23 degree day there was about 200 people exiting the train I was taking into Amsterdam to go to the beach because the sun was out.

Amsterdam canals, they just never got old, especially on glorious days like most of the ones I spent in Amsterdam.

I spied this adorable window display of someones polar bear collection while riding my (hired) bike around the city. I love how Amsterdam residents do this, nearly every window has something amazing in it.

Vintage shops always have the cutest window displays too (and names!).

Some even have window cats!

And I believe this cute little set-up was a hairdresser.

Love, love, loved this painted wall. Someone lovely on instagram translated it for me “I play in the city with everything that exists” which made a lot of sense because it was right next to a massive playground. Cute no?

The colourful racks of “zipper” vintage (I debated long and hard about the sailboat dress at the front, but it was too big for me!).

This shop was amazing, trims and crafting supplies galore at a shop called “A.boeken”.

This beautiful vintage shop as always one of my favourites. It’s called “Laura Dools” and it stocks some amazing vintage pieces from as far back as the 1920′s.

And now for my retail therapy! I picked up a few amazing dresses the first day I was in city. I bought this amazing pink floral dress from Laura Dools! Complete with bow belt and in mint condition for $50AUD!

And I picked up this handmade number from the 1950′s/60′s from Episode vintage, which is probably my favourite european vintage “chain” store. There was two in Amsterdam and also one in Brussels and Copenhagen.

I also bought this adorable green floral number (also handmade) from Zipper vintage.

And this cute Betty Barclay cross back summer dress with spectacular hat print and tie detail at the back. Too cute, no?

After the first weekend there a lot of the vintage shops got cleaned out and spent the rest of the time exploring the city. After 6 days wandering alone it was time for Trev to start his holiday (he’d been working while we were in Amsterdam) and for us to move on to waffles and chocolate in Belgium, which I’ll share next time! Kx

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Travels…

27 August 2012

Next month we’re taking a little trip back to Europe. Trev has some work over there which means once again I get to wander this beautiful city and explore Amsterdam for 5 or 6 days all by myself!

I am most looking forward to revisiting the flea markets…

With their various stalls and rummage piles of vintage clothing.

And seeing a huge abundance of bikes again. Always a novelty for the first few days.

And revisiting the various amazing vintage shops I found this time last year.

I’m also hoping to meet up with a few new Instagram friends along the way like this lovely lady in Rotterdam, about an hour outside Amsterdam which also happens to be the home of the very cute shop Elle Aime, owned by the very talented Lisa Manuels who I was very disappointed to miss out on visiting last trip.

After Amsterdam we’re heading to Sweden! I am so excited about this beautiful apartment we booked for our stay through AIRBNB.com.

Incase you’ve never heard of it Airbnb allows you to book out peoples houses/apartments/rooms for as long as you like at a much cheaper price than most hotels. And adding to that you get to live in a real home for a few days, just like a local! I’m also excited to be meeting up with this talented lady, also a new instagram friend and swedish local.

After Sweden we’ll be off the Copenhagen for a few days too. I’m hoping it will be as colourful and adorable as this! (found here)

And finally we’ll visit our old friend Berlin for a day or two before the long flight home. I cannot wait and it’s finally feeling like its close.

Of course the only downside is leaving the fur kids behind, especially when they’ve decided to quite enjoy each others’ company in the last few weeks and are very cute together. Kx

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Ueno Zoo

12 June 2012

I was very excited to visit the famous Ueno Zoo when we were in Tokyo a few weeks ago (already feels like months ago). Here are some highlights and happy snaps I took.

The Zoo entrance has some of the most beautiful illustrated signage I’ve seen anywhere! I want this one as wall paper.

Cute little tree cats of some kind. I’d never heard of these, but they were very adorable.

My favourite animal at the zoo was the mouse deers, which unfortunately were in the nocturnal enclosure and therefore my photo is a bit crap, sorry!

This little lemur thing was also very fluffy and very cute.

Aardvarks! How funny are their ears!?

The meerkats, always a favourite.

Pretty polar bear, he looked rather bored.

One of Uenos’ very famous Panda siblings. They were by far the most popular and busy attraction in the zoo.

The little goats! All the farm animals were cute really, but this little goat was super cute. I thought of the very lovely Deer Donna when I saw them, who has a bit of goat obsession :)

Even the signage at the zoo was SO cute and so very Japanese. The goat signs looked like they’d been painted by some school groups.

And this little guy was one of my favourites! A little resin aye aye on the handrail at the the aye aye forest.

And multicoloured aye ayes and lemurs decorated everything!

Even the snow cone cups were cute.

But as mentioned before, the capybara was still my personal highlight of the day. He was so big and so sleepy, he had a little flop in the dirt and went to sleep right next to me. Hope you enjoyed our little zoo tour. Kx

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