Interrail Diaries #5

 Interrail Diaries #5: The Twerps in Antwerp. :D

We hadn't planned much to do in Antwerp because we were staying in the city centre we figured we'd just walk around and see what was cool. First stop was coffee because the powdered oat milk that I bought was pretty weird, we were also pretty hungry too because the room we were in had no fridge or cooking thing we didn't have anything to eat, bar some apples. 

As we headed to the coffee shop it started raining which it would do nearly all day - of course until we were back inside lol. Too hungry to function we first picked up some sandwiches from a place that did weird vegan fillings and then we went to the cutest coffee shop for drinks but also got a slice of apple cake and a cookie. 

Americano for me and oat vanilla latte for evan! :p

 The rain was still kicking so we decided to brave it and walk to the Bejinhof of Antewerp, which was sadly having construction work but still very beautiful.

Cannot believe people still live here! the dream..

Each door of each house had beautiful calligraphy of a saints name.

The Bejinhof church - super peaceful

 Afterwards we just started walking in a random direction and ended up at the Museum aan de stroom, which is a pretty famous cubey building. You can go up the top for free and look at the view via like 10 escalators, even though it was raining and cloudy it was still a nice experience. We also got to go to the only free exhibit they have which is like a peek into their warehouse. We got to watch a really interesting clip about this lady who collects porcelain dolls and some of her dolls were there to see too.

Looks old timey in a way lmao

Cute nun doll

Portrait of the collector by her dad

After that we sat by the docks and ate our sandwiches which were honestly really mid so I will not being spilling the name of the shop. I was kinda tired already and it was only midday so to pep me up we went to an arts supply shop by the university and I got some oil pastel crayons that I've been wanting for a while yay! We then walked through town to a yarn shop that had an amazing selection of wools so Evan was happy happy happy~ I was fading at this point so we stopped at Panos (Belgian greggs LOL) and I got my Belgian waffle. We also went to the supermarket and got dinner-y things because the vegan scene in Antwerp is expensive and we saving our coins for Amsterdam. In the evening I went on a little walk and looked at some of the street shrines which are like everywhere, way more than I saw in Italy which is where I'd def expect to see them more.

The next day we gathered up our things and hit the tram, then Albert Heijn - for tasty wraps, then the train to Amsterdam yay! The train ride was super sweet, really pretty views and I devoured a cinnamon bun from AH too that was soo tasty - kinda outsold Panos waffle... :0. In front of us on the train were these kids making signs for a climate protest that was happening in Amsterdam that day - it was so cool to see. Before long we had made it - our final destination: the city of canals, getting hit by bikes and tourists being really high before 11am - Amsterdam!  Catch us next time for Interrail Diaries #6!    

Interrail Diaries #4

 Interrail Diaries 4: The One Where They Went To Bruges. 

Sadly we had to leave the spooky Blankenberge house but before moving to the next location we headed to the town of Bruges. I signed up to a bag drop at a local hotel which was a life saver because I am NOT going to be walking round all day with my big ass bag on my back. 

Mural at Bruges Station.. so pretty

Bruges is like internationally acclaimed for being so damn beautiful and guess what - it is! But also because of that it's pretty busy, even the walk to town was pretty packed with tourists but as we went about our sightseeing they kinda dispersed. 

Honestly. This could be Ghent but there's no location or date tag. LOL

My first stop I'd been dying to get to was the Bascillia of The Holy Blood - which is said to have a relic of a host that is bleeding, with Christ's blood presumerably. So. We didnt see that- oops! I didnt look up what time they had it on show, but the church itself is just stunning! It's really colourful, almost folky so not such a wasted visit lmao.

the ceiling is soo cute?

Next thing we did was try and get into a museum for free and then we got hungry so we sat by the canal and ate our sandwhiches (vegan french cheese, tomato and homous - amazing combo). We had a booking for the Folk Museum in about an hour so we walked through town, taking our time to take in the beautiful medieval streets and classically Flemish houses. We also got a coffee from a local coffee shop that made all their drinks with pea milk?! I was pleasantly surprised with my pea milk americano, not much pea-y taste lol. 

evan with a mini library!

The Folk Museum was AWESOME! Each room was set up like a different persons room e.g Blacksmith, Cobbler or like a collection of historic items from the area like embroidery or devotional objects. We both had lots of fun doing the "kids activities" like putting on clogs and doing a dance and we also got to attempt some old fashioned games with some other visitors - none of us were any good lol!

Old-timey room

Folk museum resident cat - Aristide IV. He is very miaowing and not that interested in pets.

Various religious objects, so tiny!

Vintage hat fashion show, participants: 2

If your ever in Bruges the Folk Museum is my 1 reccomendation, it's really fun ^.^ 

We also went to the lace shop next door because I was being cheap and didn't want to pay to go to the Lace Museum but honestly it was like being in a museum. The lady who owns in collects and restores vintage lace and its all sooo beautiful! I bought a little swatch I'm gonna put in a frame soon.

Ty Evan for taking sneaky picks!!

Before leaving we visited some more churches - duh! And even got to go to a Carmelite church which adjourned a monastery. I'm a big fan of Carmelite saints - St Therese of Lisieux, St Teresa of Avilia and St John of The Cross so it was cool for me hehe. 

 

Pink and blue oh my!

St Teresa of Avilia statue

By this point we were ready to continue on our journey so we got our bags, almost got run over by some school kids and ate homous and bread in a park because we missed our train lmao! We finalllly got the train - which was mega busy, because it was busy we accidentally ended up in 1st class which I lowkey did not notice until a lady in front of us was like oh no I'm in 1st class. I was like noo we are too and then she was like they probs won't check anyway - and they did not! So thank you Antwerp lady :D! We made it to Antwerp in barely one piece and rushed into a falafel shop owned by a really sweet guy who was super cheerful :) We devoured our falafel by the river but then I got hot sauce all over my jumper so we bought some accidentally corked wine and headed back to the accom to binge watch Sex And The City. I also managed to get the hot sauce off - yay!

 

Antwerp... moments before hot sauce

 

:D

What will happen to the twerps in Antwerp?? Will we finally speak Dutch? probably not. hehe

Interrail Diaries #3

Next stop is Blankenberge, which is on the coast of Belgium! It’s pretty near historic towns like Ghent and Bruges whilst not being too expensive :)

We got the train from Paris to Lille and then changed onto a train Belgium-bound! It was cool to hear the announcements change from French to Dutch as we made our way towards the west of the country. Unfortunately for us, we when arrived in Blankenberge it was raining in a serious way and then we had issues with the key… sigh. So we contacted the host who then called his friend over to help us. And guess what - he opened the door in one -_-. Because it was raining we didn’t feel like doing much so we headed to Aldi to grab some supplies for dinner and got a pretty good view of the tram lines - which are the longest in the world! 

sppooky water tower

the house had some cool old fashioned vibes but was a little spooky at times

i made coffee in this just because twin peaks.

We really wanted chips so we got some from Aldi to heat up but we couldn’t get the oven to work without potentially killing ourselves so we just ordered some in lol. The house was super cosy because it was raining, it was nice to be cold for the first time in a couple days.

The next day we headed over to the medieval town of Ghent or Gent. The most well known thing in Ghent is probably the Castle of The Counts which is this awesome castle in the centre of the town that was used in the middle ages. Inside we saw some amazingly decorated weapons as well as just the different rooms in the castle.

The illustrator Randall Casaer has illustrations and tapestry’s all over the bulding, so cool!

We then went on a walk to the Bejinhof in Ghent which are a collection of medieval houses and a church that were once used by a female religious community. These Bejinhof exist all over Belgium and The Netherlands and some have even been rebuilt over the years. We also went to a few cool shops including one that sold loads and loads of vintage mass cards and Catholic postcards. I was even given one for free ^^

I had to get the St Therese cards :)

We then walked through the city to a yarn shop where evan got some cool wool and was able to go to about five different churches lol! I am so happy to be friends with someone who doesn’t complain when I drag them into yet another church :D

Little wall shrines are everywhere! Secret foreshadowing for Antwerp where they are on like every street

We then were desperate to get some food before going back so we hit up this vegan place serving versions of traditional belgian dishes. They sadly did not have the stew I was pining after but I got some tasty meatballs. Evan got the very traditional ceaser salad burger lol!

yum yum yum

On the way back to Blankenberge we decided to walk along the sea front. The beach is like kind of a mess because they have all these ugly bars and stuff on the sand but it’s nice to see the sea :)… 

Where to next?

Interrail Diaries #2

 Day 2 began with another metro trip into town, we didn’t have a particular goal today but I knew I wanted to go a vegan bakery chain and also to the Sacre-Cœur Cathedral in Montemarte. The bakery experience may have been life changing - the options were out of this world! As well as having vegan versions of every popular French pastry they also had vegan baguettes with unique fillings! We were both enthralled by the baguette situation so we got one vegan tuna and one coleslaw and vegan fried chicken baguette. Both were amazing but the tuna really had us questioning whether it was actually tuna lol. 

gonna be dreaming about these for a while…

The walk to the Cathedral was lovely, Montemarte is really beautiful and I’ve always wanted to go after watching Amelie. We ascended the many many steps and reached the top a little out of breath but the result was so worth it! The Cathedral is so intricate and otherworldly and inside was even better. We had to queue for a bit whilst this guy played Ed Sheeran songs but we were soon inside.

Unfortunately I started coughing like immediately and it was so damn loud in a silent echo-y room lol. I didn’t take many pictures because you aren’t really supposed to but I took a sneaky one of the dome. 

how did they even make something like this? 

The experience was great and i got a few things from the gift shop. We then walked around Montemarte and enjoyed the sun. And then we got a metro to the Seine and walked around outside of the Louvre which was pretty cool but I don’t regret not going inside really - it seemed quite busy. 

Other things to note from the day: Police on rollerblades?!?!, crazy vegan cheese and looking after someone’s sweet greyhound while they went shopping. Overall Paris was so great! But we move on… there’s still lots we didn’t see that I would love to go back again and revisit :)

interrail diaries #1

 Long time no blog blah blah,.. i am sad about it honestly but life can get a bit all consuming sometimes lol! Anyway, me and my bestie have been planning an interrail trip for a while and so i thought i’d write some blog posts about it ^.^! We are going for 8 days and going to 3 countries: France, Belgium and The Netherlands! 

First stop was the eurostar from London to Paris which was honestly so fast.. we played card games the whole time mainly hehe.

pointing at nothing xD

Arriving in Paris with our huge backpacks we headed to our first food stop of the trip- Cloud Cakes, which is an all vegan bakery. We navigated the metro to get there and sort of made some sense of the ticket system?

croissant!!!!

We arrived at our accommodation which was like 40 mins away from the centre and were greeted by some cute cats ^.^ the other one was really shy but this guy came to say hi!

After a relax we went to our booking at the Paris Catacombs even if we were late because a metro line was closed! The catacombs are made up of the limestone quarry’s that are all underneath Paris and exist because when the graveyards in the city were overpopulated they needed a special place to display the bones. No pics of the actual bones but trust me it is really eerie, but also quite existential. 

creepy tunnel 

Post catacombs we needed a pick me up so we headed to a Vietnamese place where i got the most scrumptious tofu curry.. i am gonna be dreaming about it for years i think!

evan got a curry pho.. also delish!

We were pretty close to the Eiffel Tower and Hotel des Invalides so we walked through the picturesque streets as the sun set. The Eiffel Tower was all lit up by the time we arrived which was so cool. It was just amazing to see it up close!

sparkly….

I was for sure so tired by this point so we headed back on the trusty metro to the accommodation and I collapsed lol. 

Have you been to Paris? What was your favourite thing to do/see? So far it’s been really fun! Sort of like london but honestly a lot nicer in some regards haha. 

Stay tuned for more updates ^.^

Rainbows are a good sign, right?

Back again,, blah blah blah. Didn't want all my posts just to be movie reviews so this should split it up a bit lol. Last weekend, I went to see my friend in Wales and I proceeded to loose my phone on the coach and then find it, and then loose my camera on the train - has not been recovered </3. It was a wild weekend honestly, and although seeing my friend was great nearly loosing my phone caused me to go a bit crazy. As much as I can claim my phone is not an important part of my life, sadly it is, as I needed it to get home (coach tickets) and so much of my important things e.g passwords and phone numbers are on it. Getting it back was a bit of a rescue mission, that was spearheaded by my beloved friend as we sat at the bus stop. We were able to intercept the coach at its last stop thanks to another friend who lived near the terminal and was able to free it from the grip of the coach driver. Have never been so grateful to have friends in random places before. <3

As for my camera,, I think it fell out of my bag when we were on the train. Most of it I think was backed up already but it still sucks as it was my beloved cybershot I've had for 9 years... I did take some phone photos of the trip though.

Top 10 windy beach experiences

Valkyrie the sweetest cat

Castle!

Even with the drama it was fun to see my friends! Probably need to take better care of my belongings though. I saw two rainbows on the way home so I must be doing something right lol? Been having more fun with my hair lately~ here is something I did for church today. 

Today I also went to a charity shop I usually don't go to because I have barely found good stuff in there before. Well, I was wrong! I found lots of cool things, even stuff I didn't get because I was being restrained.. lol.

I found this poncho for summer!

I nearly left without this dress :0 It's soo cute and more of a chocolate brown than the picture.

Whoever donated these must of liked Kim Deal hehe. Never listened to either of the full albums so I was excited to find them =)

 

Not an excuse but I've been busy working on my Thursday shrine as of late but now that's done I will return to the blogsphere. It has been one of the most fun projects I've ever done on my site though, there is more JavaScript in it than ever before *gasp* and I've actually managed to pull of things I didn't think were possible in the past so that's pretty awesome. There's also a quiz if you were curious about which Thursday album you are! Must.. return to making film log.. agh...