Stop by damn Dam

Hi! 

We decided to go from my boyfriend’s house to Amsterdam by car. It was the first time for me, and second for him. We both were surprised at how modern and cute it was. The architecture is really cool, and there are lots of cafés with interesting and unique concepts. 

We used the P+R system, which allowed us to park the car outside the city for 3 days for a total of… 3 euros! But you have meet the requirements when you get back to the parking lot, meaning using the tram not the bus, and checking in when you are in the city center. We had to go back and do that, otherwise we would have paid 72 euros!

Now here’s our summary of our trip:

Day 1, arrival in the evening: 
We walked around downtown and saw the red district, tried some NYC pizza, and fries in a burger bar. 

Day 2
We woke up and went to the flower market, tried some (lavender, red pesto, baby goat) cheese, Belgian and Dutch waffles. After that we went to the Pluk Café, it was a bit had to find a spot but it was worth it! 
On our way to the Moco museum where we saw an exhibition on Banksy, we saw the I Amsterdam Sign, and followed the old tradition of taking a selfie with it in the background haha. We finally had a burger at Ter Marsh, it is opposite the Flower Market.

Day 3
We started out the day with a few hours at the Van Gogh Museum, ate lunch at the amazing Avocado Show, where we had an avocado burger, a bagel with flowers and sweet potato and a delicious mushroom sauce. In the afternoon we decided to do the Heineken Experience and were offered 3 beers. After that, we tried an Argentinian Restaurant and through the window saw a bunch of celebrities here to see the premiere of Bohemian Rhapsody. We then went to a bar downtown. 

 

Day 4
We tried to get into Ann Frank’s House, but we didn’t manage to get tickets online. It was sold out. We walked to Lot Sixty One, a tiny café on the outskirts of town, had some kebab and falafels at Baba, and went to the GREAT Blue Amsterdam rooftop bar. 

A few things surprised us during this short trip: You have to check out when you leave a bus, and if you don’t your card doesn’t work when you take a correspondance. Many spots don’t take cash, it’s only credit card. And to buy tickets for attractions, it’s online only! And there were many Argentinian restaurants. 

I hope you enjoyed your read, and that it inspired you somehow 🙂

Bye bye!

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It’s Mainz LIFE

It’s been a while since I haven’t posted about Mainz, Germany so I thought I would catch up on this a little. 
The Big Easy is our favorite place to celebrate Halloween. They serve amazing sweet potato fries and you have a great view of the river.

This is the dome of Mainz. It’s very pretty inside too!

Let’s go West! California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona

It’s my fourth time in the US and I just love it!
This time I went for three weeks to SF at my friend’s house and we did a road trip around Utah and Nevada…

Let’s start in San Francisco.

I’m lucky because I could meet another friend of mine who lives in the area! After lunch in a Mexican restaurant and a little walk we grabbed a Mexican hot chocolate. We also visited Oakland. 

With my friend-host, we went to Sausalito for the day.

We then left for our road trip! We started by Zion National Park, where we hiked the Narrows.

We drove all the way to Grand Staircase Escalante National Park.

We saw a chipmunk (cute!).

And we finished our trip in the Luxor Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, with some cocktails by the pool.

On our way back, we kept on visiting the city, discovered the Dropbox headquarters with my friend’s roommate, we went into the Red Woods (I love these woods) and we tried some classes (Pole dance and aerial flow yoga).

I’ll be back!

Why Russia?

My friend and I decided to go to Russia in August 2016. We stayed four days in Moscow and seven in Saint Petersburg. We were on a tourist visa.

On our arrival there was a storm so it was a bit chaotic but then we had quite good weather! We stayed at the Apple Hostel Moscow, near the Kitay Gorod metro station. 

We saw the Kremlin, the red square, the State Historical Museum, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral.

 

You can see the Moskva River.

The big shopping center by night (the GUM) was really impressive.

From the Central Children’s Store, we had an incredible view of Moscow.

The Alexander Gardens, the golden Dormition Cathedral are other landmarks that you must visit in Moscow!
The World Clock Fountain is really cool too.

Of course we had to go to the Vodka Museum.

Here is the Bolshoi theater (although it was closed so we couldn’t go inside and see a performance).

We went inside the State Tretyakov Gallery, where we can see the famous “Girl with Peaches” painting and sea paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky.

Don’t forget to take the metro because in Moscow it is really beautiful!
One of my favorite things was the Gorky Park, where you can hear classical music as you watch the water fountains. 

We then took the night train to Saint Petersburg. 

We stayed at the BroadSky Hostel.

We walked around a lot, met a nice Russian girl who brought us to a pizzeria with a view of the Kazan Cathedral.

 

She took us to a party downtown and we went on a roof at night.

We also saw the Isaac Cathedral…

And Church on the Savior on Blood.

Here are some other views of Saint Petersburg: The Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace, Peter and Paul Fortress, Nevsky Prospekt (a shopping street), the Palace Square…

  We enjoyed a few drinks in a bar with awesome cocktails.

From there, we visited Peterhof Palace, the Russian version of Versailles!

So, what do you think about it?

Sawadee in Thailand

A year ago we decided to (finally) go to Thailand. We arrived at Phuket, we went to Khao Sok and then to Bangkok.

Let’s start by Phuket.
We went to the market to eat fruits and drink smoothies.
 

We found the Natural Restaurant, a restaurant with vegetation everywhere! It was our favorite restaurant in Thailand. We had fresh juices and a famous dessert: mango sticky rice!

The next day, we went on a tour to Phang Nga Bay. The whole day was spent on a boat on the Adaman sea, we had canoe so that we could visit three caves. We had a guide who explained everything. We ate some traditional food on the boat, we could swim around the islands.

We made a krathong, made a vow and let it go on the water. We also saw bioluminescent plankton in the water (when you put your hand in the water they appear it’s like magic!).

On the next day, we took a bus to Karon Beach.

And we left for Khao Sok by bus. When we arrived in the jungle it was night time and we went to a restaurant in the middle of the jungle. We saw a big flying insect, just to remind us that we were in Thailand haha. 

In Khao Sok we went in the jungle with a guide who showed us animals (insects, adult and baby monkeys) and made us breakfast. We swam in the river (before he told us that there were leeches everywhere haha). 

On our way back to Phuket, we went to the Big Buddha (in the middle of the island) and we rented a scooter and drove around. 
 

Then we left for Bangkok.

We visited Grand Palace.

We went to the Songkran Water Festival as it was the New Year’s Eve in Thailand at that time. It lasts three whole days and people throw water at you to bring good luck. It’s lots of fun!

It’s tuktuk time!

We shouldn’t forget the flower market in the city.

 

I hope you enjoyed this long article, I really loved our trip to Thailand so it was hard for me to reduce the number of pictures on this post. 

I will definitely go back to Thailand in a few years to visit the North of the country. Feel free to leave a comment to give us some tips for that next trip, we’d be excited to read you!

Have a great day!

New Year’s Eve in Barcelona

This year our friends made the proposition to go to Barcelona to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We took a few days before and after that night to enjoy our trip, as we hadn’t been in a loooong time.

Here’s what we did:

We arrived really early in the morning and couldn’t do the check-in so we went to a 365 Bakery to get breakfast. It was really nice!

We walked downtown and reached the sea, we went to the beach and to the W Hotel in the evening. 

We had some tapas in a delicious restaurant and some sangria. 

The second day, in the afternoon we went to Park Guell because Casa Batllo, our original plan was super expensive (28 euros to get inside!). We just admired it from the outside. 

 

We visited the Museum of Illusions, which was tons of fun.

In the evening, we went to the restaurant The Cow Market. We had booked it online a few weeks before, it was a nice meal and not that pricy for a New Year’s Eve! And they offered some grapes and champagne to go (mostly because they wanted us to leave, I suspect though haha). 
We went to the Poble, which is a big medieval castle, they had a party for New Year’s Eve which was nice, but it was a bit cold so we were glad to have booked the VIP tickets to go inside. The entrance included 4 drinks and some cottillons and grapes.

The next day we slepts in the morning and in the afternoon we went to have tapas and beer at El Nacional, it was suuuper cute inside, with many lights.

On the fourth day, we did some shopping (its was the sales at Mango hehe). We ate a paella at Mil Grito’s downtown.           

In the evening, we went to a rooftop restaurant on top of a hotel, we had a view of Barcelona which was very nice and we could see the sea also. Yay!

Our flight was pretty late in the evening so we went to a friend to relax a little before being on our way. 

Alone in Rome

Hey hey!

We’re back with a new post about the city of Love. My boyfriend and I went in February because we had some spare time and we wanted to take our time to enjoy the city without too many tourists. 

Although the weather wasn’t always warm we appreciated doing things at our own pace. 

I hope you’ll enjoy the photos!

On Sunday morning we arrived and went to our Airbnb in Trastevere. We walked around the area, went to Campo de Fiori… and stopped at the Cantina dei Papi for some wine & food tasting.

We tried the vino Santo de Chianti (2008), the Sorsi di Sole Zibibbo…And our first mozzarella!

Let me tell ya, that was GREAT.
On Monday we visited the Vatican Museums (with the Get Your Guide skip the line pass). 

After our visits we ate a huge pizza at L’Isola della Pizza for two and we had a break on the banks of the Tiber. 

The next day, we woke up to see the sunset from Giancolo Hill. After breakfast we entered Saint Peter’s dome. 

The inside of the dome is SO beautiful!

And look at that view of Saint Peter’s Square…

This was recommended by a friend of ours. Supposedly the best ice-cream of the historic center of Rome! So good!

Piazza Navona, I think you can see why it’s so famous

We stopped by this nice restaurant for a carbonara and some lasagnas.

We threw a coin in the fountain and took some plenty of pictures.

At the top of the Spanish steps we had some beer to watch the sunset.

Such a perfect day!

On Wednesday we visited the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

I absolutely love this door from the Roman Forum.

The view from Palatino Hill.

Because life is so much better with bubbles! Haha

 

This was the Roof Garden Hotel Forum. One of the best restaurants in Rome, you should check it out! Awesome service, view of the Roman Forum and amazing food!

After that we went to the Bocca de la Verita.

The next day, we went to the Pantheon to have a hot chocolate in a hotel, we went to have a drink at l’Antica Salumeria and a last meal in another restaurant in the area.

That’s how we ended our trip! Nice, right?

 

 

England Trip

Here it is, I’m back in England for a week!

I visited a few places where I had never been before. 

The Channel Sea

Leeds Castle

 

 

Cambridge

 

 

London

Cold – Froid – Kälte in Germany

Last week we decided to travel a bit to discover more of my boyfriend’s amazing country! We started by visiting Frankfurt, and had a reservation for a traditional restaurant, Paulaner, which is famous for its beer!

And after a stop in Mainz where we went to the artsy Stijl Design Market…

…we drove to a beautiful ski station near the Titisee lake in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) in Germany. 

And because we need strength to fight the cold… 

Here it is, I hope you enjoyed this tiny post about my most recent adventures!

And as always, any thought of yours is very welcome!

 

Let’s Save Paris.

The recent Paris tragedy has hurt many souls around the world. This post is a reminder that Paris IS and WILL STAY a great city worth visiting. To this extent, my purpose is to share with you my favorite places in the city, and hopefully make you want to explore them. 

To stay creative: La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Le Palais de Tokyo, le Centre Pompidou (Contemporary Art)…

To walk around: Le Jardin des Tuileries (where you can get Mövenpick ice cream in the summer). It’s perfect for some reading time or for chatting with friends.There is also fun fair in the summer, and a Christmas market in the winter time.

I also like le Marais because it’s very artsy, you can find original cafés & restaurants.

Le Musée Rodin where you can see the sculpture of Le Penseur (the Thinker).

La Place des Vosges: Just to sit on a bench or on the grass and enjoy.

To shop: The long street called Rue Rivoli (There are famous stores and some smaller ones)

To brunch: Any restaurant Place St Catherine or Le Paradis du Fruit @ La Bastille. 

To eat: La Cidrerie du Marais (You can choose which ingredients you want to put in your crepe and it’s not expensive).

To have tea: Le Mandarin Oriental without hesitation. Great service, although a little expensive.

To have a picnic : Parc de Buttes-Chaumont (There’s a lake, a waterfall..)

To work in a café: La Favorite: It’s calm and you have big glass-windows to people-watch and get inspired!

To have a drink: the 7th Terrass Hotel, and the barge (Le Marcounet) on the Seine.

To work out: The Freeness Studio (4 floors, unlimited plan 24/7, collective classes & machines, sauna & smoothies)

What are your favorite spots in Paris? Please feel free to write them down so that we keep the city alive!