Thursday, December 3, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
i was out of your league and you were 20,000 beneath the sea
Thursday, November 12, 2009
new favorite quote
tiny trenches and wee wellies
yesterday was the ss10 childrenswear shoot. a special day since it was my very first burberry photo shoot and i. was. pumped. i practically skipped to the tube station. but of course i got lost for two whole hours on a horrible journey to burberry shoot-land. it started raining and i had walked for an hour in the cold before i finally found a cab. i now completely appreciate clearly marked road signs and metrocab's dependability.
i finally arrived and all the trouble getting there was worth it. i walk in to a large table with the set to the right and the BUFFET to the left. unlimited breakfast foods=heaven. i met the photographer, looked over the shots i had missed, and saw them making the accompanying video of a baby girl. heartbreakingly cute. then it was lunch time and another buffet of food was brought out and served to us. i think i had about 5 meals in 2 hours and loved iiit. craft services got blown out of the water. the next round of kid models came in and i got to watch their photoshoots. i was mistaken as the little girl's mother...still not sure if i should be flattered or not. either way, i think my 'oh my god no!' scared the photo assistant. he later apologized. haha.
the best part of it all was that the entire time the kids were there, two young british guys entertained them. i started talking to them and turns out they had both just finished college and were working part time as entertainers for kid parties and other events. they had been hired for the shoot to keep the kids happy when they weren't working, and literally colored and played games with them all day. it was hilarious to watch these two 20something boys playing hide and seek while wearing decorated pink crowns. i fell a little in love. at the end i even joined in with the coloring and played with the rocket balloons too!
overall i definitely enjoyed being able to see what ad campaign shoots are actually like. I wish i could explain more about the set but it's all super duper secret :) all the SS10 ads will break in february!
no pain, no gain
puedo ir al bano?
Madrid: A Weekend
Friday night:
- Arrive really late to Cat’s Hostel
- Cool decorations but kind of gross
- Drunk couple tries to break in during the night – fail
Saturday:
- Wake up at the crack of dawn for free breakfast
- Walk around everyyywhere
- Plaza Major-deserted because we are the only ones awake that early
- Park
- Really beautiful and really big-lots of paths, fountains, and funny trees
- Huge lake with boats and humongous goldfish
- Crystal Palace
- Actually it’s glass
- Waterfall in front
- Black swan! What
- Palace and Church
- Big, white, looks like Vienna
- Prado Museum
- Goya, Rubens, etc…
- My favorite: “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Bosch
- The left panel is dedicated to Paradise, with the creation of Eve and the fountain of life, while the right panel shows hell. The middle panel shows the world in lustful abandon.
- "lustful abandon" hahahaha
- Authentic lunch
- Sangria!!!
- First encounter with paella
- Horrifying
- 60 cent wine at El Corte Ingles
- .60 liter of wine + .25 jug of water = best purchase of my entire life
- Weird street performers
- Mickey and Minnie (got a pic)
- Guy with no head
- People that look like stones
- One guy I actually thought was a statue-freaaaaky
- Siesta time
- When in Rome
Saturday night:
- Tapas restaurant
- On the 6th floor of a rando building
- More sangriaaa
- Free shots because everyone loves us
- Flamenco dancing
- Like Irish dancing but with less leg whipping
- Duet and then solos by the guy and girl dancer
- Even MORE sangria
- Too much sangria=early bedtime for all
Sunday:
- Market
- Winds up and down one main street and all the little side streets
- Bought a truck load of scarves
- Leopard scarf=new obsession (wearing right now)
- Lunch in a little square
- Second encounter with paella
- Still horrifying
- DUNKING DONUTS
- Iced coffee has never tasted so good
- Perfect ending to the trip
Friday, November 6, 2009
i was your anger and you were my fear now that it's over of course it's so clear
Tuesday we went to Imperial to celebrate Hillary's return to Londontown. I'm so grateful that Imperial is so close, it has saved me a many boring night in Crofton. We exchanged traveling stories and Lee told me the best stuff about Octoberfest. I want to go sooo bad but will learn from their experience and not stay in tents (or hallucinate hahaha). Wednesday some of us met up after work at Porterhouse. There was supposed to be a live band but there wasn't sooo I guess that just means we have to go again. Darn. Porterhouse has a huge menu of beers from around the world so I tried the one and only Swedish beer there-Crocodile!
Thursday was Guy Fawkes Night, which is a holiday celebrating the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605 that was supposed to blow up Parliament. All over England they celebrate by burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes in a huge bonfire and then a fireworks display. We went to a Guy Fawkes Night nearby in Notting Hill and they do not kid around with this holiday. The bonfire was in fact enormous and the fireworks display was suprisingly good-a tough review to recieve from a bunch of 4th of July loving Americans. It as a really fun cultural event to take part in, and we walked down the road for a drink afterwards at The Elgin-an old Victorian style pub where the Clash used to play!!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Cultural Activities
Leopards, Grizzly Bears, and Zombies, Oh my!
The Halloween festivities started out Thursday night at the BU Halloween Party in Notting Hill. Can't complain about drink vouchers, free food, and seeing a BU employee in a full on cow costume.
Actual Halloween night started out with a concert at the music venue the Barbican. Ian and I went to a unique concert that was a performance by the band Grizzly Bear and the London Symphony Orchestra. It was a really good concert because they made the orchestra blend into their songs. I was impressed and happy because I got to hear an orchestra, which is a rare event lately. Here’s the band’s site, definitely check them out:http://grizzly-bear.net/
Afterwards we morphed into Shaun of the Dead and a leopard. Met a Shaun of the Dead wannabe who gave us drinks on the tube, got a little lost, and then I went to meet up with the 4th floor crew at a club that was throwing a Halloween party. I was told I sound Scandanavian (??), got a bruise from running away from a fight, and somehow didn’t take a single picture in my costume. It was an odd night. The weirdest part though was that people in London actually dress up SCARY. Not just kind of scary with a witch hat. No, full on scary with blood and fangs and everything. I severely missed Halloween in Boston/normal places.
Kate and Fur
There are many markets in London, and the one I was the most excited to go to was Camden Market. It is GINORMOUS. It’s made up of many smaller markets that intertwine all over the place and sells anything you could ever want. There’s food, clothes, vintage stuff, jewelry, everything. You get lost every 5 minutes as all the paths twist and turn and go underground then over bridges. I loved it.
I had been on a search for a Kate Moss shirt ever since meeting a bartender who was wearing one at the Sun Inn Splendor. And to my delight I found an amazing one at Camden. It is my new favorite article of clothing, but probably not my most versatile because it is of her giving the finger... Not appropriate many places I guess, but I just couldn’t not walk away with it. I also found a big gray fur vest at a vintage shop. I can’t wait to wear it in Wisconsin and get many many stares.
The Royal Treatment
October 29th
I came into work to a briefing about how the Prince of Wales was coming to visit the Burberry headquarters at Horseferry House. Lacking royal knowledge I had no idea if that meant Charles, William, or Harry. Obviously I was crossing fingers and toes it was William but, alas, it was just his dad.
Burberry’s first floor is set up with a big VIP waiting room on one side next to the “branding room” set up with displays of the different sub-brands, with the reception and elevators to the right. The middle of the entire building is an open atrium with glass on all sides. When it was time for the Prince to arrive all the Burberry employees lined the balconies and glass stairs to look down at everything. I stood in the stairs with some girls I work next to and got to see him walk in and meet with Christopher Bailey (Creative Director) and Angela Ahrendts (CEO). I mostly saw the top of his head until he turned to go to the elevators and waved at us!!!
After he had gone into the 7th floor design room with all the higher-ups I asked one of my co-workers what I could compare my Prince sighting to in the States and she said it’s like seeing the President. AWESOME!
Here’s a link to an article about his visit:
http://www.elleuk.com/news/Fashion-News/prince-charles-visits-burberry-hq-in-london
Monday, November 2, 2009
everything is better down under
October 22-24
Thursday: Heaps of fun with my favorite Aussie
My Australian friend, Theon, came to visit London for a few days before heading back home down under. I met up with him by his hotel in King’s Cross and then we went out to Crazy Larry’s, a place some Imperial boys had recommended to us. Unfortunately Crazy Larry’s wasn’t very crazzzy so we went to McD’s and (surprise!) Arch Angel. Luckily he liked Arch Angel, I mean who doesn’t, and I even got him to try out my go to Arch Angel drink-pear cider ;)
Friday: Now THIS is my song!
I took the day off from work and rested a bit until meeting up with the crew for drinks byOxford Circus. People say Picadilly Circus is like Times Square in NYC but I have to say that Oxford Circus is much more akin to the painfully busy streets and overcrowded sidewalks of my old workplace. I am avoiding that tube stop at all costs in the future. After a drink we had dinner at a little gem of a sandwich shop with probably 100 menu items, cheap prices, and a super friendly sandwich guy. Credit goes to Lee for the find.
That night we switched it up and went to Covent Garden to go out. I led the way toPorterhouse, a massive pub I had been to on a previous outrageous night (see Los Locos reference in September…). You walk in and are immediately surrounded by wood and copper piping. The building is huge with multiple floors in staggered levels and mazes of stairs. One part is kind of like a balcony over the main floor bar, and the basement houses the live bands. The Friday night band there is phenomenal; we debated if it was a real band or just the radio until we actually saw that there was indeed a band below us.
After Porterhouse we crossed Covent Garden and went to Los Locos, where things mustmustmust get crazy. We danced like mad and escaped with only a few bruises (hahaha). Luckily we had a sweetheart of a protector with us to get us all home safely and make sure we didn't stay on the dance floor ground too long...thanks Theon for being the absolute best.
sorry, we're kind of sweaty from the los locos dance floor
Saturday: No, I am from Boston
After Theon left for his day long journey home and sleeping off our Los Locos night, Hillary and I went to Topshop to check out the huge sale we had been eyeing the day before. We got some great deals and I finally can say I shopped in Topshop without buying the entire store. Success.
That night we went back to Notting Hill to the Prince Albert and then went to The Gate, a club right nearby. You go downstairs and it’s pretty small, with a few rooms off to the side. They played our requests and we met some BC/NYC guys so all in all, a nice night in London.
By Sunday morning my entire body was aching from the dancefest that was the weekend. I’m so glad I didn’t waste money on a gym membership here.
party crashing
October 21
After work Hillary, Becky, and I went on a mini-pub crawl. We were supposed to meet up with a club from Imperial College but couldn’t find them so just did our own little crawl. We went to two places in Notting Hill, the Sun Inn Splendor and the Prince Albert. At Sun Inn Splendor we discovered great bar food and the tastiest beer ever-Fruli! It’s a Belgium white ale that is strawberry flavored. New fave. The Prince Albert is another nice little pub in the area that was full of legit British people (you can tell because they are all wondrously fashionable) and had a small beer garden in the back.
We moved on to the Imperial pub to meet up with a group of our friends. Little did we know that we were crashing a graduation celebration. Imperial College is mostly guys and often compared to London’s version of MIT. A lot of smart British boys, all in full suits for their graduation. It was a sight to see. Weird that they graduate in October though. They explained to us that they are done with classes in May, go start working, then come back to actually graduate.
As one dapper young man explains his experience, “The real world is rubbish!” Words of wisdom, I say.
a new world religion
October 19, Sunday:
We got up at 9:30 am to eat breakfast and start the day drinking early. We get to THE CHURCH around 12:15 pm to find a huge line has already formed. People are dressed up as anything and everything. There are pirates, guys in football uniforms, cheerleaders, lots of neon, and even a very daring guy in a Borat swimsuit. We walk in and it’s a GIGANTIC theater-type space with a huge stage in front. To the side is the bar where you buy your drinks three at a time and are given a big plastic bag to carry around with you.
We each bought a bag of drinks and started to get into THE CHURCH mood. They were already playing amazing music. This isn’t club music or dance music, this is straight forward sing along lose your voice rock music. Lots of oldies but goodies. On either side of the stage are huge tv screens that zoom in on random people in the crowd and then display hilarious captions about the camera man’s victims. I want to be the guy who makes fun of people through captions every Sunday.
The “show” began and things got out of control at that point. There is a comedian at first, but that was pretty pointless to us because the combination of a thick accent and yelling into a mic=confusion not amusement. The ground by now is full of empty cans and plastic bags and people are getting rowdy-we even saw a guy chug a beer out a shoe. I am in awe of everything. Then a stripper came out and we were mesmerized by her for a while. After she was done doing her thing it basically turns into a massive dance party. We pouted our way onto stage and danced like mad for the rest of the time.
The weirdest part is leaving THE CHURCH and realizing it’s sunny outside and only 4:30 pm….the sight of a bunch of weirdly dressed drunk people leaving that place every afternoon must be a sight to behold to normal citizens passing by.
I want to spend every Sunday at THE CHURCH. But I don’t think my body can handle it. That, and my sparkly dress lost a lot of sparkles last time. I might need a new outfit.
taking it easy like the eagles told me to
Friday night: I love Irish pubs
Went to Picadilly to go out and ended up at O’Neills. O’Neills is a bar that everyone I know has gone to and loved so I wassoo excited to finally get to go myself. Hillary and I got ourselves in for free for being Americans! (something that was quite opposite of what I expected when telling the bouncer we love the USA) The bar itself is 3 floors with the top floor having live music. A lot of people from the Crofton came so I had a great time and it’s always a perk when the live band is good.
Saturday: Gluttony
A bunch of us got up and went to Borough Market, a huge food market by the London Bridge. You walk through the entrance to a big outside open area full of food stands ranging from Mexican food to bakeries to sandwiches to cheese booths. Must go here ravenous. You just walk around and sample everything you can and then decide what you like best to buy. I bought myself a baggie full of Turkish delights (yumm) and we had the best veggie burgers in the entire world, complete with hummus and wheat bread buns. Sometime I pretend to be healthy. Then we sat down and enjoyed a big glass of homemade sangria before heading back home.
Saturday night: London lacks watered down beer
For so long we knew about the Ale Trail through South Kensington and since a lot of us were going to The Church in the morning and others were tired it was the perfect night to take it easy at some pubs. The way the Ale Trail works is that you go to four different pubs around the neighborhood and buy an ale at each, collecting stamps on your map along the way. After you get all four stamps you get a free t-shirt! The only downside of it all is ale is a tad bit too warm and thick for my taste. I still would give up an arm for a Miller Light here.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Let's make a list of who we need and it's not much, if anything
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
someday my prince will come
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
the highest concentration of trench coats in the whole wide world
Monday, October 12, 2009
My Burberry "Induction"
Vienna Day 2: "When in Vienna"
We woke up extremely late and caught a tram into the city center to meet Kerstin, an old friend from high school who lives in Vienna. She showed us around the major sights, including the Hofburg and many large museums. In fact, a lot of Vienna is very large, very pretty buildings. The Hofburg itself is an imposing palace that takes up the equivalent of about two city blocks. Kerstin then walked us through a big outdoor food market before having to leave us for a while to work on a project.
We continued wandering and saw their Parliament and Town Hall. Their Town Hall is an enormous place with an intricate church-like façade. In front of their Town Hall was a circus/food fair going on so we stopped and tried out some fried dough and jam. Then we went into the Treasury to see some interesting artifacts-the Roman Empire’s crown jewels, a unicorn horn, the Holy Lance, and the supposed Holy Grail! My favorite was definitely the 8 foot tall unicorn horn :)
At that point we met up with Kerstin and her friends at a bar/club place nearby. To be more specific, it was a big boat docked in the Danube channel. Oh yeah. The main floor was a bar and the level below was a dance floor. The music in Vienna was incredible-they love their 80’s and early 90’s hits! We tried over and over again to request anything new and failed and failed and failed. The scene was totally different than what we were used to in London but we had a blast partying with a bunch of Austrian kids. When in Vienna!
After miraculously finding out way back to the “hostel”, we caught a couple of hours of sleep and then took a train to Bratislava to catch our flight back to Londontown.
EUROTRIP=SUCCESS
Vienna Day 1: "Nein! Nein! Nein!"
We took a train into Vienna and arrived at our Hostel mid afternoon. Well, hostel might not be the most appropriate word for our living accommodations. It was more like a smelly sauna of an apartment run by a small Asian woman who also lived there….I wish I was joking. The upside was that we were the only people there (since uh it was an apartment) and within walking distance to the city center.
All sufficiently starving we walked a few blocks away to grab dinner. We were greeted by an old Austrian man who sat us with menus completely in German. We ended up ordering some dishes of meat after some major deliberation and lucked out with a very satisfying and filling dinner.
We pulled ourselves together and wandered toward the city center, aka the 1st district. We settled into our first place that was part café, part bar and had huge paintings on each wall. Some of the boys wanted to play pool so we went to the back room. Ian immediately spilled beer onto the pool table. The very large Austrian owner comes running over, sees the beer on the table, and EXPLODES. He was yelling “Nein! Nein! Nein!” and flailing his arms everywhere. We all just stood around awkwardly as he spewed (probably profane) German at us. Ian apologized and the big owner calmed down, but we still took it as our sign to leave. We stopped at another bar before getting to the main road in the city center and decided to be really cultural and finish our night at McDonald’s for a mouthwatering McFlurry. (side note-Potato Strips are Austrian McDonald’s fries on steroids and have changed my view of versions of potatoes forever…)
Budapest Day 2: "Cinnamon and Oranges"
After sleeping in late to recover from the previous night’s activities, we set out on our quest to experience a traditional Budapest bath. After buying some European style (read: small) swimsuits we walked across the bridge to the Buda side to go to the Gellert baths, a huge complex with outdoor and indoor Roman style baths. The lobby area was a huge marble room with high ceilings and a dome center. Here are some pictures from the Gellert website of the two big pools:
After our bath we hiked up the nearby mountain to get a good view of the city. At the top we could see 360 degrees of the area, it was so beautiful. We ended the sightseeing by walking through the palace and across the cable bridge at sunset.
Budapest Nightlife: Part 2
That night we planned our own pub crawl using a Time Out magazine and marked up another map with dots. Finding the bars this night proved just as difficult…
Bar 1:
Accidently ended up at the cave bar again! We sat back in our little cement corner to start off our night.
Bar 2:
This bar seemed non-existent. We asked locals that spoke English where it was and they said they had never even heard of it. One block further and we walk past some guys standing outside of a big door covered with thick, dark fabric and of course it turns out it was the place we were looking for. This place was also partly outdoors with totally random seating arrangements and interesting art stuck in every corner of each room and all around the ceilings. We sat at a table next to plywood walls with a big red couch recessed into the back wall. The bathroom was next to a weird empty room and the stalls were covered with old broken computer keyboards. We decide to get the party started with some tequila shots and made one of the best discoveries ever. In Hungary, they take tequila shots with cinnamon and oranges. Yes, seriously. You sprinkle cinnamon on each side of an orange wedge and shove it in your mouth after the shot. It sounds insane but is so far superior to our salt/lime method. Needless to say we took many tequila shots this night.
Bar 3:
We ended our time in Budapest by going back to the very first bar we went to with the pommel horse seating. We were brave and took a traditional Hungarian shot, which is not for the faint of heart.
Budapest Day 1: "Just follow the dots!"
We arrived in Budapest Wednesday around noon, after a little..delay departing from Luton airport. After quickly dropping off our stuff at the hostel we started walking along the Danube river since it was a beautiful 80 degrees outside. On the west side of the river was hilly Buda and on the east side of the river was flat Pest. We walked a big circle around Pest and down Andrassy Avenue to see the main sights including the Chain Bridge, St. Stephen’s Basilica, Parliament, The House of Terror, the Opera House, and Heroes’ Square. Budapest architecture is an interesting mix of styles and influences, we passed everything from Roman to Gothic.
We stopped at the House of Terror, a museum made in the honor of those affected by the rule of fascist and communist regimes in Hungary in the actual building that both parties headquartered. It was extremely well done and pretty depressing. But I did learn a lot about the history of Hungary, a country I admit I know very little about, and it made everything we saw have much more context.
Our first night, after dinner at a restaurant that had traditional Hungarian food, we made friends with some Australians while pre-gaming at our hostel. Our new bestie Carl led the way on a pub crawl to bars nearby with a map marked up with dot destinations. We followed the dots to the most unique, incredible bars I have ever been to.
Budapest Nightlife, Part 1
First of all, there is no street full of bars or even area of bars in Budapest. We quickly discovered that from the outside the best places look like the worst, or not even a bar at all.
Bar 1:
The first stop was a bar made from what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Once through a few rooms the place opened up to the outside with a bar on one side and large tables and other seating to the right. The seating included benches, a pommel horse, old bathtubs turned into couches, and a Red Bull car converted into a loveseat. Throughout the place there were also big torches of fire on the ground. A huge canopy hung over part of the roof. Needless to say we were not expecting this from the dingy black opening guarded by large men in leather jackets. We sat and talked for a while with the Aussies, a Brazilian, and a Swedish girl (bringing the Swedish population of the bar to 1.5! haha).
Bar 2:
This bar looked like the sketchiest place I had ever seen from the outside. The entrance was cement steps leading down into a small room with graffiti covered walls. The group went to the back room to sit, which was a huge cement room with low walls-totally batman's cave.
Bar/club 3:
We had given up on finding the last dot on our map and were about to buy a kebab when someone realized that the large, unmarked metal doors were actually our destination. Once inside we walked up five flights of metal stairs that opened up to a dark bar with red lights. Up another flight of stairs we find ourselves on a huge rooftop with tons of chairs and a big bar in the corner. We heard that the very dedicated partyers stay on the roof to watch the sunrise. After some time on the rooftop we went downstairs and cut through the coat check to the dance floor. We ended the night with a kebab (a special vegetarian one for me) and found our way all the way back to our hostel around 5 am.