Posted by kim on July 19th, 2010
Just a couple of photos from our Sunday morning in London, a lovely Spanish lady even took a photo of us. It was nice and relatively quite, apart from spectators of a 10km run (which I’ll be blogging about tomorrow). It was a windy day, though, thus my hair in the final image and my wincing face as it whipped around into my eyes.
And us, where I look small and Adam looks tall. And has a quiff.
Posted by kim on July 16th, 2010
Just a couple of photos from last Saturday when we were in London. Our hotel was a couple of minutes walk from Tower bridge & the Tower of London, I really suck at outdoor super sunny photography, really need to figure out how to do that.. hum.
These were the last photos from that day as we headed out towards our show after checking in at the hotel, but I will be writing a little about the meal we had that evening at Wahaca (amazingly nice, cheap & relaxed Mexican food).
Posted by kim on July 12th, 2010
PHEWWWW. What a whirlwind weekend we had London, barely had time to pause. I’m going to be doing a few posts on the things we did/saw, hope you don’t mind. Don’t really care if you do ‘cos it’s my blog anyway…!
We arrived in London at 9.45am on Saturday (after waking up at 5.45am, walking to the train station and tripping down on a fast leaning train) and our first stop was 221b Baker Street. Unfortunately the circle line was closed all weekend, so we had to kinda get our bearings and find another tube station, we ended up walking to Tottenham Court Rd and got the tube from their to Baker Street.
We had a specific location in mind, and that was the living quarters of that fabulous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. On our walk there we also past a former residence of H. G. Wells, this was turning into quite the literary excursion!
We didn’t have an incredible amount of time to spend there, so we didn’t bother going into the museum part of 221b Baker Street, instead we just browsed around the shop part. The shop was full of trinkets, curios and general over-priced tourist knick-knacks. You can see them all on the website. Quite a lot of great inspiration for some projects that I’m working on at the moment, too!
I also really loved Baker Street tube station, here are the tiles that adorn the walls. Amazing, I want these in my library (er.. when I build one) next to my giant fireplace (again with the ‘when’).
Posted by kim on July 9th, 2010
… We’re heading to London. We set off at 6.45am (woah.. early) tomorrow morning and plan to do some super touristy things. It’s weird, we travel the world, yet hardly ever go to our own capital city. The reason for our visit revolves around the BUST craftacular, as some fo you know, I applied to be a vendor this year but didn’t get a spot. That was kinda gutting, but we’ve planned a really nice weekend anyway, so I’m not too bothered anymore.
After arriving we’re heading straight towards 221b Baker Street, from they’re we’ll travel across to Bethnal Green to the BUST craftacular. I know quite a few of the vendors that are going to be there so it’ll be good to meet a few of them! There’s also some FinestImaginary items for sale at the All Things Original stall. After we’ve had chance to look around the fair we’re going to head to our hotel. We booked a ‘secret hotel’ through lastminute.com which turned out to be Apex City of London (which looks super posh, even though we’ll hardly be there..!). It’s right by the Tower of London so after checking in the plan is to go and take a look there, and Tower Bridge. Then we’ll be heading back to the hotel to get ready for our late afternoon/evening shenanigans. We’re planning on eating at Wahaca before walking over to Victoria – hopefully via Buckingham palace et. al. – where we’ll be going to the Apollo Victoria to see Wicked.. omg!
Hoping for a relatively early start! First stops will be sight-seeing places around Westminster, which I’m hoping will be quietish on a Sunday morning? Then we’ll be heading up to Regents Street & Oxford Circus for some heaving window shopping. Definitely wanting to hit Anthropologie, Liberty and the flagship Topshop. As we’ll be near two, we thought we’d try LEON for a late lunch. Has anyone been? So our train back is at 5.45pm, if we have time we might head over to Camden for a stroll.
Fun times! It’s meant to be an epic heat wave this weekend.. gah! I’m taking my 400d with a 50mm lens on (the perfect light-weight travel lens, I find). Expect some photo posts next week.
Posted by kim on July 3rd, 2010
There are so many places that I want to visit, from countries to cities, and even, in this case, hotels. The Madonna Inn is quite possibly the kitschest place on Earth, located in San Luis Obispo, a city between Los Angeles and San Francisco on California’s coastline. The inn was created by a self-made real estate developer, Alex Madonna, and his wife in 1958. The exterior of the inn has the styling of a Swiss chalet, but the real magnificence of this motel lies inside the 110 uniquely themed bedrooms, super amazingly kitsch restaurants and – one of favourite bits – multi-coloured poolside furniture.
Image from the Madonna Inn website
With 110 unique bedrooms there’s an absolute myriad of kitschness to choose from, some of them a little more extreme than others. Each room has it’s own theme carried through the decor, one of my favourites is room 206, the ‘Old Mill’ room. It has a working mini water wheel with characters that zoom around… amazing!
Certain rooms also feature rock waterfall showers, and massive chunks of rock clad on the walls. Quite a lot of the rooms look like they’re straight out of the playboy mansion, too (in fact, did you ever catch that episode of ‘Girls Next Door’ where they stayed in the Madonna Inn? they probably felt right at home!).
Others rooms that are neat:
Check out the bar & steakhouse. The colours! The decor!
And this poolside furniture, I want this for my garden. (has anyone seen multi-colour lawn furniture like this available? I super love it!)
It’s also worth noting that the Madonna Inn has a rock waterfall urinal, how lucky for you fellas! There’s also a spa and a fitness suite, but who cares? I’d spend all day basking in the glory of kitsch (let’s not even get started on what the gift shops might offer!).
The Madonna Inn is definitely, definitely on my list of places to stay the next time we visit California, I can’t think of a better place to stay on that long drive between San Francisco and LA, can you?! The rates are pretty decent, too, with rooms starting at little over $209.
Has anyone stayed here? What was it like?!
Hi, I'm Kim. Between being a web designer and making pretty things I'm mostly interested in Creatures (regular and crypto), geekiness, my inner domestic goddess, drawing and coffee.
