52 HOURS IN LONDON

London, 2 weeks ago...
If you're planning on going to London in the near future, you might want to continue reading, here's some of the places we visited on our trip or some we can highly recommend. Kind of like a 'Yes Please Mademoiselle guide to London'! Haha. Ok:



On a street corner somewhere around Old street, Shoreditch.
Take the tube to Old Street, grab a coffee (or any other hot drink you like) from Shoreditch Grind (it's hard to miss, right next to the tube station stairs). Head over to Rivington street, pop in the Jas M.B. shop/showcase (I have a backpack+bag by Jas MB and they're the only bags I use on a daily basis. I've had the backpack for about 8 years now, the bag for 3 and they're still in a very good condition, great quality). Then continue to Redchurch street where you'll find Labour & Wait (I'm sure you'll find some great Christmas gifts there) and just, well, wander around a bit, there's a bunch of nice shops in the area.




Inside the LN-CC store...!

Then head over to Dalston (tube/overground station: Dalston Kingsland) and get to Shacklewell lane. That's where you'll find LN-CC; I've gone on & on about this shop for a long time on this blog now and this was actually the first time I visited it in person. I realllly recommend you visit the shop if you can (don't forget to schedule an appointment!), the staff is super friendly, there's a great atmosphere and they have an incredibly great selection of brands (the big Belgians like Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester & Martin Margiela; A lot of great Japanese brands like Yohji Yamamoto, Blackmeans & Toga; and a few personal favourites of mine like JW Anderson and Jil Sander - I don't say this very often, but wow, I almost DIED when I saw the Jil Sander hooded sweaters (here’s a reminder in case you forgot how awesome they are)! I'm so madly in love with them :) - & more) for both men & women plus a books & music corner. Added bonus is you get a friendship bracelet with every purchase, HA :)! (it's in the details, people)
Then, while you're in Dalston, check out the recently opened Kristina Records for some sweet music. If you're up for it, you can walk to Broadway Market (it's actually not that far, took us about half an hour) where you'll find super nice bars & little restaurants, book shops, etc. We had dinner at La Vie En Rose, yum.






More wandering around town the next day...








And being all intellectual and cultural and stuff the day after that at the V&A + Tate Modern.

Some more tips you might want to remember - shops:
- AA Bookshop: a tiny shop but filled to the brim with Architecture books & magazines. 32, Bedford Square
- Muji: You might live in a town with a Muji store, but I don't, so for all of you who don't either, visit one of their shops if you can!
- Selfridges: No introduction needed I guess? Drool a bit over all the prettyness at the Céline corner, then get to the back of the store where you'll find Monki (that cheap Scandinavian brand you'll actually be able to afford!). Be sure to visit the food & wine hall as well hehe.
- Lazy Oaf: very fun stuff; clothing, accessories, stationary, etc. 19, Fouberts Place
- Dover Street Market: "About DSM: Concept and Direction by Rei KAWAKUBO" That should be reason enough to get you there I reckon. 17-18 Dover Street Market
- More music/vinyl shops: Sounds of the Universe (7 Broadwick street), Phonica (51 Poland street), Music & Video exchange (38 Notting Hill Gate)

Where to eat: (we didn't have a chance to try most of these out for ourselves but they were on our 'recommended' list)
- Kastner & Ovens, 52 Floral street
- Nordic Bakery, 14 Golden Square
- Spuntino, 61 Rupert Street
- Stockpot, 18 Old Compton Street (and this one's actually cheap! Win!)

And if you still need some more tips, visit Unlike London or This Is Naive.

Also, as always: more pictures on Flickr!

CPH, DENMARK

So, about that trip I did a few weeks ago... As promised: more pictures.

These are from the first part of the trip, Copenhagen - Denmark!







More on Flickr

Do rent a bike when you're in Copenhagen, the city is a DREAM for cyclists!
Can't wait to go back...

TILTING AND SHIFTING

Took these last month during my trip to Norway - more to come but I'm still working on them...!





More soon on Flickr

(And before anyone asks, no there's nothing wrong with your eyes, it's just a tilt-shift filter on my camera.)

PICTURES FROM PARIS PT. II

OK everyone, here's part 2!
So, where were we... Aah yes, Avenue de l'Opera! Of course this avenue leads to the Opera, here it is:



From there, it was on to the Palais Royal to visit the Acne store! I saw a lot of the things I posted about in my previous Acne post, including that green leather jacket everyone loved so much! It is actually FAR more brighter than it is on the pictures, it's really really bright green.



This was taken inside the Palais Royal. There are a lot of high-end boutiques in there, including Marc Jacobs, Acne, Rick Owens, Pierre Hardy & La Petite Robe Noire which is a very chic vintage shop filled with amazing Little Black Dresses (La petite robe noire is french for LBD).

After that we went to our Hotel to freshen up a bit. The room we were in was really... we just laughed of excitement when we saw it, but really loved it. It was the PERFECT room to be in for this trip! This hotel would've been far out of budget if it wasn't for the great Spring Promotion we got ^-^ (We stayed at Hotel Ferrandi in St-Germain-des-Prés, really lovely hotel & the staff was super nice) We even got cookies on our pillow! Yaay!




OK, let's get back on the road! Don't you just love the Eiffel tower by night?



The weather was so nice that night, not cold or anything! We walked to the Champs Elysées:




L'arc de Triomphe...
And this is a shot of the Louis Vuitton flagship store on the Champs Elysées. The Stephen Sprouse window displays were so nice, especially at night!



My sister and I both wanted to go see the Andy Warhol exhibition "Warhol's Wide World" at the Grand Palais (that's the place where Karl Lagerfeld shows the Chanel collections). When we got there, there was a huge line of people waiting to get in, bummer! But it's Andy Warhol and we both love him so we just took a deep breath, calmly walked over there and prayed it wouldn't take all morning for us to get in. And what's a girl to do when waiting in line? Take some pictures of course!



This is the Petit Palais, just across the street from the Grand Palais.



Shoe shot!



We eventually got in and wow, it was really worth the wait! It still runs untill 13/07, if you love Andy Warhol, you will adoooore this exhibition! (more info here)


Aaah Mamie Gateaux! We discovered this little salon de thé on our way back to the metro. It was in the street of our hotel so we HAD to come back! After 2 exhausting but super fun days, it seemed like the perfect end for this trip. So we sat down, ordered 2 hot chocolates (HUGE bowls!) and enjoyed our last moments in Paris before hopping on the train back home...




(Mamie Gateaux - 66, rue du Cherche-Midi, 75006 Paris)

I didn't tell you this in my post from yesterday, but one of the reasons we visited the Colette shop was my sister and I really wanted to go see a PS1 bag hehe (yes, I know!). We eventually saw one and we both fell in love with it all over again, it's just sooooooo gorgeous.
So then this happened, just when we got off the train that brought us back home:
S- AAH!
Me- What?
S- Look! AAH!
Me- But what is it??
S- Look! The bag! The bag! The... PS1!
Me- Whaaaaaaaat???

There was this lady walking right in front of us, carrying -yup- the same PS1 we had seen the day before. Some girls have all the luck! (Ok we kind of stalked the lady to the exit of the train station, just to make sure she didn't accidentily drop her bag... ^-^)

PICTURES FROM PARIS

I have a lot of pictures to share with you all, I know some of you are dying to see more of the city so I hope this will satisfy your needs ^-^ These are the pictures taken with my sisters camera, the ones from my camera have to wait a bit (they're not developed yet).

OK so I live close to the french border so what we (= my sister + me) did on thursday morning was catch a train to Lille (a city in France about a half an hour away from where I live). From there it was on to a 1-hour ride on the tgv (Train à Grande Vitesse or high speed train) to Paris! At home, I live about a 2 min walk from the train station, so I literally rolled out of my bed, jumped on a train, jumped on another (faster) train and exactly 3 hours after I had rolled out of my bed, I was standing on Paris soil!
We arrived at the Gare du Nord, bought ourselves a Paris Visite card for 2 days (it's a metro card with an unlimited amount of rides, you pay for the number of days you're in the city - really good if you're visiting!) and we were off to the hotel to drop off our bags! On our way to the hotel, we were walking past a little shop with all these bright coloured clothes in their windows, but then, wait, is that a Balmain jacket? Oh yeah it is. And that's just the first shop I saw... Well, it IS Paris after all!



That was fun, no? There's lots more to share...
These were the window displays at Le Bon Marché (well, some of them, that shop is HUGE)




My sister and I had a little list of shops & things we wanted to do/visit and one of them was visiting the Uniqlo shop, they have the BEST jeans, seriously. We can't buy Uniqlo online (you have to live in the UK to do that :/) so this was about the only chance we had! The shop is in a rather (sorry) stupid mall in La Défense, the business quarter of Paris.

Now I present to you, the latest and most anticipated motion picture of the year: "Sofie danse à La Défense!":



(She's carrying her new jeans btw) It was shot in front of La Grande Arche in La Défense, here's another picture of it:



After La Défense we took a metro back to the city centre. We got out at the Tuileries:



Meet my little vintage camera (I promise to get its pictures done ASAP, I'm so curious to see them myself).






The Tuileries are nice, but we didn't go all the way to the Louvre since we both visited it before and it was really really full of people.



Street view...



This is Colette, very busy as you can see (but definitely worth the visit).



A store dedicated ONLY to Comme des Garçons perfumes! ^-^ (the pink windows were so nice)



I'll leave you with this picture of the Avenue de l'Opéra for today, more pictures soon! (If I post all of them at once, this post would get really really long and really really boring)
See you!