Tewkesbury

If this outfit looks a little familiar to the last post it’s because I was only away for 5 days – so just took one coat and bag! I’m always amazed at bloggers who manage to generate 2-3 completely different outfit posts on a single weekend trip; how much stuff are you guys taking? It impresses me as I’m way too lazy to carry my own stuff and never pack anything heavy or bulky. I’m sure that will change when I get my own entourage..!

This dress is a rare new item and it was a Christmas present; I love velvet and I love red and I really love short dresses so it’s a winner all round. I got the coat from a charity shop and including dry cleaning it was a grand total of £14! Everyone describes it as red but it’s more of a very dark orange.

These photos are from Tewkesbury – the main attraction is the stunning Tewkesbury Abbey, but we spent a fun afternoon exploring antiques shops and tea rooms. That was kind of the timetable for the whole holiday if I’m honest – I’ve never really been on that kind of slower-paced, meandering holiday and so it was quite novel for me and a really different experience. I especially loved strolling along the river; I tend to think of London as quite green and full of nature (typical Londoner…) but there’s none of that woodland brand of stillness that I found in the Cotswolds.

Isle Of Wight

I don’t think I ever would have visited if my grandparents hadn’t moved there 8 years ago, but now it’s become a place I know quite well. During my most recent Christmas visit I took my two James’ as a sort of comfort blanket. I’m very, very lucky to have such wonderful friends. I get on well with both my parents, but there are some members of my American family who genuinely trouble me! I knew the Christmas visit would see me arguing about something at some point and I needed my two knights in shining armour to act as my own suit of armour.

Family aside, it was a really lovely few days spent in the Isle Of Wight. I took very few pictures apart from this bracing walk in Quarr Abbey, a peaceful (still operative) monastery in the north of the Isle. We wandered through the ruins of the original monastery, exploring and adventuring through original doorways and under broken arches; now display cabinets for mossy boulders and occasional skulls. It was nice to have some time just the three of us, away from my problematic family. We spent most of our time in the big shared family house playing chess and watching films or at my grandparents place; playing the piano, listening to my Granddad talk about Vietnam and Kenya and celebrating his 90th birthday with a huge elephant-shaped cake.

Frankfurt

  About 3 weeks I jetted off to Frankfurt for a few days. I was accompanying my friends to a trade show where they were helping on the 3D Hubs stand. You may remember this post about a brilliant guy (and if not, maybe get re-acquainted with him… more soon) and my fascination with design engineering. The trade fair took place in Messe Frankfurt, one of Europe’s largest exhibition centres. It is HUGE – on one memorable night it took us an hour and a half to exit the entire site. Whilst there I got to meet lots of inspiring people working in similar design, tech and 3D printing-related spheres – I really enjoyed the networking!

I took some time out on one of the days to explore Frankfurt a little more. It’s a really beautiful city; the old part of town was particularly enchanting with lots of bohemian architecture and fanciful coloured houses. We went in late Autumn so the trees were at their most vivid and chimed in with the yellow, beige and burgundy buildings. It was incredibly peaceful wandering along the river and I felt so grateful just to be surrounded by such beautiful colours.

We were staying in the centre of Frankfurt. I was able to visit all the areas I was interested in just by walking – my favourite best way to get a feel for a new place! I’ve only been to Germany once before and I found Frankfurt to be very unique, so now I’m eager to explore further. Next time I’ll show you the christmas markets!

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Stables Market

When you live in the same place your whole life you start to build long and lengthy relationships with certain places; so it is for me and Camden. It’s one of the areas of London I know best having lived and worked there in the past. These days I’m there at least once a week and I never get bored!

Danilo and I were in Camden for a meeting on this occasion; happily the end of the meeting coincided with our lunch-hour so we used it as an excuse to briefly run round the markets and admire the relatively new Amy Winehouse statue. I’ve not discussed it much before, but I’m a huge, huge Amy Winehouse fan; I think the statue is beautiful and it’s a wonderful way to commemorate her spirit. She really was such a part of the local community and Camden really felt her loss personally when she died. I like that she’s back and watching over all of us there.

My outfit is very standard “Laila”; short skirt, white shoes, colourful shirt, bag (my one bag…) and winter coat. Danilo (who took these photos) and James are always saying how difficult it is to take photos for me as I never shut up and lose interest after about 10 seconds, maybe you can tell..!

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Temple Square

Temple Square is a huge complex in Salt Lake City where most of the headquarters for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are based. I think Salt Lake City is best known as a Mormon town and so naturally it’s a place with a lot of history and somewhere I wanted to visit. The grounds were very beautiful; I was really taken with the gorgeous flower arrangements everywhere. We were lucky enough to be there on a beautifully sunny day; the huge white temple literally looked like it was glowing and the soft breeze amongst the flowers helped to create such a feeling of tranquility.

We were able to go into each of the buildings to look around and learn more about the history of the area, and even hear the renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsing which was pretty magical! Given how busy my trip was overall I really relished being able to just wander such a calm and peaceful area freely and have some time to reflect by myself.

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Statue Garden

A few photos from the Statue Garden at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

By the Thames

Do you ever have those days where you end up abandoning your plans to just hang out and chat? My good friend Danilo and I somehow managed to spend the whole day hanging out on an impromptu whim and it was so much fun. We started off the Monday morning visiting an exciting new site where WOLF PACK (the contemporary theatre group I run and which Danilo is a member of) will be performing next year and then supposedly we were both going home to do work. Except we never did! The sun got brighter and brighter and spurred us on to just soak it all up and be tourists in our own city. We ended up wandering around Waterloo, browsing records and vintage clothes, eating falafel in the sunshine, pigeon-watching (far more entertaining than people-watching), wandering along the thames for a sunny afternoon pint on the Tamesis dock and strolling all the way back to the South Bank.

Danilo (pronounced “Dah-nee-low”) is one of my close friends from university and I think we are the only two to have taken the “freelance” path since graduating (as opposed to full time employment or teaching). I don’t tend to feature my friends on here (apart from James, it may as well be called James Parade) as barely any of my friends know about my blog. To be honest I doubt most of my friends actually know what a blog is!

It was such a gorgeous day to take in the beautiful views of the river. I’m not normally a massive fan of my own photography but I was pretty pleased with the postcard quality of the top photo and the garden museum was beautiful despite it being autumn already! Cheesy tourist photos were a must, and I also had to include a shot of Danilo’s amazing vintage shirt inherited from his grandparents. Thank you to Danilo for the photos of me and for an awesome Monday!

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Saturday

Hello everyone! These photos are from last week when I spent a very rare Saturday off work and miracle of miracles; it was sunny! We headed to Tottenham Court Road, ostensibly to buy a banjo from Hobgoblin but in reality we just wandered around the local area, eating food (local cafe), buying food (Holland and Barrat), eating more food (Wagamamas), buying more food (Chinatown), eating more food (Haagen Dagz in Leicester Square)… it was a great day and I also came away with two recipe books from Waterstones. It was so bizarre seeing how rammed Oxford Street was on a Saturday! The nice things about working weekends is I take my days off during the week and exhibitions/food shops/cafes/public transport are all far quieter at 2pm on a Tuesday meaning I forget how busy London gets!

This is my new shirt (along with about 30 others) from the charity shop where I work once a week. I seem to return from every shift with 2 or 3 new amazing items which I couldn’t possibly leave behind. I already own about 4 other gingham items (although none in pink, so it’s justified, right?!) but this shirt is made from such a soft cotton I couldn’t resist. These are my favourite dungarees which I have had for about 4 years. The overall effect was a bit “farm girl” I suppose but whatever; it wasn’t quite warm enough for a t-shirt so this seemed a good in-between outfit!

Check shirt – Gap via charity shop, £2. Dungarees – Rokit, £20. Trainers – Comme des Garcons via charity shop, £6. Sunglasses – €4, supermarket in Greece.