Bruges

Two days of Bruges, Belgium together with my husband, without the children. A real treat. Below some highlights & links.

1. Wonderful guesthouse Cote Canal & Huyze Hertsberge. Big rooms, great ambiance and excellent service;
2. Being a vegetarian married to a non-vege, there should be both on the menu. Baobab serves great dishes with excellent wine;
3. A place we've visited before many years ago for a quick lunch, but also good for dinner or just a drink. Has a cinema next to it and serves the largest menu of rum I've ever seen. It's called De Republiek;
4. Only open during lunch hours and very popular amongst the vegetarians Lotus;
5. A little shop selling 'out of the ordinairy' stuff from tribal to industrial. Bummer they didn't have that lamp in another colour. Depot D'o;
6. Beautiful gallery with a great diversity of artworks, Absolute Art Gallery;
7. All about paper & postcards, definitely worth a visit Alfa Papyrus, you won't leave empty handed;
8. Though all of Bruges is one big historical monument, het Begijnhof has a special ambiance;
9. Nice exhibition at the 'Oud Sint Jan' From Picasso to Joan Miro;
10. Bruges is full of places selling the most excellent chocolates, I believe in total 53. Zucchero makes & sells all kinds of sugars for birth, baptism or wedding.
11. The very tiny oh so typical Belgian pub Garre, serving a huge list of beers including there own. Luckely for me wine is also available.

Aalesund

Ever heard of Aalesund, it's a town in Norway and it has an excellent shop called Farmor Ingvarda selling lovely stuff and... our Liefgoed postcards. Have a look for yourself at Farmor Ingvarda's blog. It's not very likely that we visit Norway anytime soon, but when we do, Farmor Ingvarda will certainly be on the list of things to visit. Thank you Trine for having us in your excellent shop!

Shopping

Yesterday a visit to Seminyak, Bali. It was on our son's wishlist to go there (I love the fact that they get to the age they actually like shopping). It's unbelievable how things can change in such short time. It's been only two years ago since our last visit and although it always was the place to be for design it's been growing and developping with many many more excellent shops.

By nature we went to our known places first, like Jellyfish , it's a kids clothing shop with out of the ordinairy designs where our girl bought her first dress 5 years ago, she has quite a collection now of Jellyfish dresses. Here showing her latetst.

Next visit was the Corner Store (unfortunately no website), I always buy the bags made of ricebags made by Madcow, every year they have different designs.

Stop for a lunch at Made's Warung, I think the best place for a quite Indo atmosphere lunch or diner or simply a drink, serving Indo, Japanese and Western food. It's a place with a long history. They even made the place bigger now, but still maintained the old intimate style.

 Made's Warung in the early days

 Made's Warung now

I pick out two places that caught my attention and are new to me. First one is
La Bijouterie of Cooperative de creation. I like the way they make simple jewellery out of basic materials using letters and natural materials. Unfortunately on the website you can only see a tiny bit of their huge divers collection.

The last one is GV Amazing Crafts, they design wonderful furniture, I'm in love with their desk, couch and old style travel cabinet.

2 days 2 reasons

Two days of New York for two reasons: Liefgoed & Sister Act. It's been quite some years since I visited NY and it's always been a rush. But this time I had my mind set on going to Brooklyn. No idea of how it was before, but now it was a real pleasure strolling around the streets & having a look at the little shops. My two favourites being Papel & Acorn. Papel is a lovely shop selling all kinds of paper, cards & stationary. For more pictures & the story of Papel Allyn wrote a very nice piece.
The other favourite is Acorn. A beautiful toy shop and not only for children as my mom will find out tomorrow.

And than the big Broadway Premiere of Joop's & Whoopie's Sister Act. It was a big blast, the show was absolutely amazing. Can't say anything less about the party at the excellent location of Gotham Hall.

One more thing, ever heard of Shake Shack? I didn't, it was just around the corner of the hotel and as there was a line waiting for the door and me being curious I had a go at it. It's a soo much better than the usal snack store and... you can have a glass of wine with it as well. Consider this as an invitation to locate yourselves at Amsterdam.

Gent

Last week, my husband & I went without the kids for 2 days to Ghent, Belgium. It is such a lovely place. Some highlights below.

1. Excellent bed & breakfast Alphabed;
2. Good coffee Barista;
3. Unfortunately they were there only for a short time, but visit the online shop, beautiful stuff all white Soki;
4. We didn't have time enough to visit the museum, at the shop they sell nice things from past times Huis van Alijn;
5. Excellent Italian restaurant, a bit on the outside of the city Il Mezzogiorno. Visit their blog as well for recipes;
6. Lovely exhibition of Art Deco Design Museum;
7. Really beautiful shop Huiszwaluw;
8. Modern Art Museum S.M.A.K.;
9. The best cakes & meringues Julie's House.

Only two days

It was only two days in Hamburg, Germany, but so much can happen in 48 hours. We were received at the hotel by this enormous but friendly smiling Steiff bear. The hotel was full of Christmas decoration and the snow outside was the finishing touch. Looking so much better than the ordinary snow spray, really Astrid, don't know how you pulled that together :).

The first evening we were invited for the Opening Night of Sister Act. A bright & swinging musical. Honestly, when you're feeling depressed, go there, it's an absolute party! Isn't this a wonderful picture of Whoopi (co-producer) & the leading lady of the show? For more: Sister Act

I remember going to the World premiere of Sister Act in London in June 2009, a similar wonderful evening, different temperature though! But through my eyes, not being an expert on this, I would say the show even improved since then.  World premiere June 2009 London

We all know, and in case you didn't, now you do, the Germans are big fans of Christmas. They decorate everything, in style I must say & have Christmas markets with loads of people actually standing outside chatting & having fun. Never got the part of having fun in the cold, but that's me. It must be said Hamburg looked like a fairytale, it was a joy and extremely difficult NOT to spend huge amounts of money.

One more thing. At the superb Christmas dinner I learned that one of the guests,  which I know for almost 10 years now, opened a shop full of delicacies. Mostly German, based on grandmothers recipes. You can visit it online, but also in Hamburg. So, if you're still looking for that special Christmas present for mom or dad, hurry! My Supper

Looks like...

...we've found the right school for our kids. Time to move! Make no mistake, we love the school the kids are right now, only problem, it's not in Bali.

Ny-Na, One of these places!

Once a month we like to highlight one of the shops that sell our products & have some more inside information about the people who own them. All of the places that sell our products are selectively picked by ourselves as we want to keep them as exclusive as possible.

This month, Ny-Na at St. Jacobsstraat 11, in Leeuwarden. Ny-Na sells our postcards for a long, long time now.
Hope you enjoy!

Who is Ny-Na & what was your motivation for starting the shop?

We are Nynke and Anna, together we form Ny-Na, started 14 years ago in Leeuwarden because we thought that this small city could use some colours and craziness. The things we sell are something completely different what Leeuwarden is used to.

Your favorite article all times in the store

Our favourite article changes every month, it depends on what new stuff we find(like the Liefgoed cards they are amazing), it could be the Mexican altars, lucky charms and right now we have some awesome self-made puppets from local artists.

The worst day of the week & why

We don't have a special worst day but every quiet, rainy day seems the worst hahaha

Your biggest wish for this coming year
Now that the crisis is more or less over we hope that all the small businesses pick up and of course we hope that Ny-Na will become the most popular giftshop in Leeuwarden! Peace, love and happiness would be cool too.

You sell Liefgoed products because…
The cards from Liefgoed fit perfectly in Ny-Na, they are beautiful made, nostalgic and funny just like we are!

Forever friend

I think it's been two years ago since we made our acquaintance with the phenomenon called Purl Soho. This excellent shop in New York, which we never visited in person, has everything crafty bees like us could possibly want. So when my niece went to the Big Apple quite some time ago, she left with orders from us. Lovely girl as she is, she did as she was told making us very happy.

Since then, we've been so busy that (I can only speak for myself now) I haven't thought about this place till recently. So when I looked at their blog, I found a review of Wee Wonderfuls book.

As soon as I saw Marie Antoinette I was sold. Being born on the same day as Marie Antoinette, but still having my head on the place where it should be, I think I deserve Marie Antoinette specially made for me as a forever friend. So this is to anyone who feels the same way I do about this, please make me one. 'Cause I don't want to do it myself this time.

For more extremely cute forever friends of Wee Wonderfuls.

Art & Nature

Spending this summer on the lovely Greek island Santorini we came across a great artist Yorgos Kypris. I love his work with metal, his vision on how we treat the world & it's beautiful nature (bad, very bad!). On top of, it he still has the enthusiasm of a child looking into the world with such eagerness to explore and create. So don't leave Santorini without visiting the Mati Art Gallery, the impressions will stay with you for a long time.