Beautiful Belgium - The Concrete Cavas Walking Tour Edition

Slowly following on from our arrival edition and the graffiti lane edition, I bring you... 

the Concrete Canvas tour!

We attempted the Concrete Canvas walking tour on our second day in Ghent but somehow managed to fail miserably at finding any of the art work we wanted to see.

Bring on our last day in Ghent, lots of motivation to find these gems all over the city and the hopes of a day filled with fun!

Roa was on the top of our list, after being slightly familiar with his work after seeing some of it around London. We opened our map and circled all of his art work on the tour and set off for the second time - succeeding greatly!!

Discussing the pros and cons 

We took turns at being the tour guide, which we all took very seriously..

That pen came in very handy!

And we managed to see ALL of the Roa artwork on the tour! 

Ghent is pretty cool - not only is it beautiful, it's pretty small which made walking around the town super easy and enjoyable! 

The rabbits were my favourite piece of Roa's artwork, I'm so glad we managed to find them!

We started to try and guess which artwork was coming up next, as on the map it didn't specify which animal it'd be, so that added to the excitement!!

This was another favourite from Bue the Warrior - They had some cool takes and concepts of stuff!

We stopped off for lunch at a cute wee pub, filled our bellies with delicious food and mulled wine, then we were ready to find the last few artworks! 

Ghent was such a lovely place to spend a couple of days with two pretty choice people. 

If you love old cities, wandering around aimlessly whilst actually achieving things and and getting a bit cultured, then I'd highly recommend it!

Beautiful Belgium - The Graffiti Lane Edition

We went for a stroll down Graffiti Lane once we had arrived at our hotel and got settled in. It was on a list of things to do in Ghent and was right across from our hotel. We entered this scary lane, hoping for the best...

We weren't disappointed!! 

The colours were amazing! So was the art work! 

This was perfect timing as we were there on Valentines day!

  

I felt like my colourful hat and bag ensemble blended in perfectly!

It was a fun adventure to start our trip!

Here's Beautiful Belgium Part 1 - The Arrival Edition  

Beautiful Belgium - The Arrival Edition

During the February half term break, myself and two other fun humans, who we shall call Rach and Cara, set out on an adventure to Belgium..

First stop was Ghent!

After getting on the ridiculously early 7am Eurostar from London, we arrived in Brussels a couple of hours later to then enjoy another short train ride to Ghent.

Somehow, mainly thanks to Rachyroo our travel guide goddess, we got on the tram to the town centre where our glorious hotel was. For someone like myself who doesn't stay in hotels very often, there was quite a novelty about it all. I'm not sure what was more fun - putting our most prized possessions - read: passports - into the safe and opening and closing it a few times for fun, OR the fun of getting to sleep in a luxuriously huge bed!

We stayed at The Novotel hotel and I really couldn't complain one bit about it. We were lucky enough to have a pretty sweet view from our window overlooking a little square, getting cheeky views of the locals demolishing beers in the early afternoon and my favourite part - hearing the bloody church bells ring for a bajillion hours straight on a Sunday morning... I swear, it didn't stop for at least two hours and when our heads were slightly sore and we were all craving frites, it wasn't the best start! However - the windows of the hotel were very soundproof!

A slightly worrying long way down.

We did loads of exploring and walking around the quaint, little, cobble stone streets dodging bikes, ate lots of delicious things and took lots of photos of each other... and the beautiful city we were in for three days.

Ghent canal by day

Ghent canals by night - photo cred to rachy

It was fun walking down the street holding hands, merging into a line when the crowds got a bit squishy, taking in the stares and the feeling of being on a school trip...

It was almost, only just though, as fun walking down the streets holding a cone of frites in our warm hungover embrace, scouting out the best spot to sit down before we collapsed in heaps. 

There was so much more fun to be had... Stay tuned!!

You should check out Cara's blog - Britventures for part one and part two of our trip away!

Life Lately

Life has been a bit crayzay over the last few months!! 

After 3 long months, this time next week, I'll be in the hospital having my first ever operation. It's freaking me out to no end, I feel like I'm going to throw up every time I think about it, but I know my knee will finally be fixed. 

I didn't know what it'd be like to be on crutches; to have my leg in a massive brace; to be incredibly restricted in pretty much every aspect of life; to be in this sort of pain. 

But it's all going to be better soon!

Autumn has well and truly hit London. The clocks have gone back an hour. The days are darker earlier. There's that autumnal chill in the air. The leaves on the footpath are scattered for what seems like forever. 

We've approached the end of the grueling first term back at school, with extreme levels of exhaustion and stress. 

The spiders have been out to play in backyards. And in our case, as of last night, four wee mice have resided in our kitchen - more on those antics later!

Flower markets have been visited with friends. Pubs have been calling our names after long days at work. 

Sunrises have been marveled at in awe. 

And mustache beds have been slept in. With mustache pjs. Life won that night!

I should theoretically be able to post some more 'insightful' posts over the next 6 weeks, as my butt molds its shape into the couch.

Stay tuned...

That time when Mother came to visit!

I was super lucky to have my beautiful and wonderful Mumma come and spend time with me in London after chaperoning by darling Grandad to Glasgow. 

We realised we only had 5 days in London, in between going to Devon, Bath and back up to Glasgow, so we made the most of it!

We visited the Poppies at the Tower of London..

Ate some delicious food in Convent Garden...

Visited the Kaffe Fasset exhibition at the American Museum in Bath..

Had a lovely time in a little seaside town called Bude...

And of course caught up with some family!

It was lovely to see my Mum and Grandad again, as well as all the other rellies who are spread out over the country! 

Thanks to everyone putting up with me being miserable most of the time!!

That time we went to Devon

8 "ladies"

2 cottages

8 back massages

A steam room and spa pool

Life won! 

That time we played in the sunshine

Last weekend we had a lovely Spring day which was fun to share with a lovely lady! My friend Erin and I met up at one of my favourite New Zealand cafes - The Long White Cloud. We ate, chatted, drank one of the best flat whites in London, then left to embrace the glorious sunshine! 

There's about a 100% chance I walked out of the cafe, hands in the air, twirling around, shouting saying "What a GLORIOUS day!". Sometimes, you just gotta. 

Our goal was to get to London Fields to sit in the sun. 

First stop: Hackney City Farm

I love city farms! The chickens scare me, but sometimes they look like they're wearing harem pants, so it's ok.

The pigs are so huge, they could supply you with a years worth of bacon. 

The goats are pretty suave. 

And those wee donkeys, they're just so cute and fluffy. And have really big willies!

Next stop: Broadway Market

We mooched on up to Broadway Market after our farm excitement. 

After battling the use of the footpath with some cheeky, scary, annoying squirrels, who really were out to get us, we made it to the hustle and bustle of proper hipster town. 

Broadway Market has been around since the early 1900's and was filled with an eclectic range of goods and people! 

Source

Next stop: London Fields

After treating ourselves to an ice block and a cider, we sat in the park with every other hipster in East London. That in itself is an experience and a half! It was the perfect place to people watch! and creep on the hipsters!

We left the park at that perfect time - the sun was going down, the hipsters were overwhelming, and the canal was calling our names!

We strolled back to Angel via the canal, and it was the perfect ending to a perfect day! 

I love London on days like these!