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Hustle and Bustle on the Baker-loo Line

After a day of glorious autumnal sunshine came a day of drizzle. My umbrella was whipped out of my satchel and had to report for duty as I traipsed the wet and foggy streets of London – however, the day didn’t remain too dark for very long as I soon found myself surrounded by THE FIRST FESTIVE LIGHTS OF CHRISTMAS. More on that later.

I spent the morning working out my interview route, which involved a stop at Finchley Road station. It’s a small but quirky stop that has a friendly cobbler and a mini fruit market stationed just outside. Once I’d successfully completed my ‘test commute’ I hopped back on to the tube and headed off to Baker Street in Marylebone.

This street is most famous for being the residence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous fictional character, Detective Sherlock Holmes, who according to the books, lived at 221B Baker Street. 221B Baker Street used to be a fictional address as the Baker Street addresses only used to go up to number 100, however the address now belongs to ‘The Sherlock Holmes Museum’. Sherlock Holmes is an iconic character from British literature and I loved seeing the influence that his creation has had upon the street itself – from kitsch cameos of his face adorning the tiled walls in the underground, to Sherlock themed memorabilia shops on the street itself.

Several actors have portrayed the character of Sherlock Holmes over the years – from Basil Rathbone, who inspired the 1986 Disney classic “Basil the great Mouse Detective” ( a childhood favourite of mine, although the film had some terrifying characters. The peg legged bat and the fat cat haunted several of my nightmares) to the most recent Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch, a British actor who has sparked the internet meme “Otters that look like Benedict Cumberbatch” and has achieved an impressive cult following… getting both otters and Sherlock Holmes trending worldwide.

(The picture is taken from The Huffington Post and is originally credited as Red Scharlach/Daily Otter)

There is a new series of ‘Sherlock’ starting on January 1st 2014 with a mini episode previewing on Christmas Day, so if you’re in the London area, why not mosey on down to Baker Street and get yourself warmed up for some festive ‘Sherlock’ viewing!

Baker Street is also a short walk away from the world famous waxwork museum, Madame Tussauds, which is situated on Marylebone Road. I didn’t go into the museum as I think it’s probably an activity best enjoyed with friends or family… It’s recommended to take a camera with you to make the most of numerous photo opportunities with the famous waxworks. Remember – I was ‘the lone ranger’ at this point – I didn’t fancy being ‘that tourist’ taking selfies in the corner with a waxen Kate Middleton. The entry price is steep at around £30 a ticket, however the long queues and positive reviews speak for themselves. You can often save a few pounds by buying a ticket for Madame Tussauds in combination with tickets for other attractions (i.e. otherwise known as a *drumroll*… combination ticket). Definitely an attraction that I will try in future.

Onwards and upwards from Baker Street, my next destination was Oxford Circus. And here is where the bright lights come in! Oxford Street was full of festive cheer and christmas light garlands – I popped into the Disney Store (those famous words, I can’t ever walk past without going in for a gander) where all the new merchandise for Disney’s new christmas release “Frozen” was on display. The Disney Store on Oxford Street is the largest in Europe – and of course was decked out accordingly for the Christmas season.

The main aim of going to Oxford Street was to track down an elusive pair of Forever21 ‘Off Roading wedge booties’ (that name doesn’t sound convoluted in the slightest). It took me a while to find Forever21 (because I had been going along the street in the wrong direction, standard) but I got there eventually and made a beeline straight for the shoe section, WHERE ONE SOLE PAIR OF THOSE BURGUNDY WEDGES WERE ON THE SHELF. It was a ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail ‘moment, I was a bedraggled knight (without coconut shells) and those wedges were the Grail. All I had to do was pounce on them before anyone else could – shoes in hand, I was told by a shop assistant that they were indeed the very last pair on Oxford Street. It was clearly fate. Prancing around the shop floor like a show pony*, I knew that we were meant to be… they were even the right size…

*Or a duck. My 15 year old brother likes to say that I walk like a duck in heels. He’s started playing a ringtone of ducks quacking if I even dare wear them in his presence. Teenagers are so sensitive these days. He’s also a great fan of showing me the video clip below.

Slight digression there. I do apologise. Back to the Oxford Street story. Clutching my Forever21 bag contentedly in hand, I spent a good 45 minutes being entranced by the glitzy window displays of both Selfridges and Marks and Spencer. Fairytales and children’s classics are obviously a big trend this Winter when it comes to department store christmas displays. Selfridges have placed giant versions of iconic gifts being skied and clambered on by miniature snow people and the odd miniature reindeer in their displays. The objects vary from luxury items (such as Charlotte Olympia glittery cat ballet flats) to classic childhood toys (a vat of oversized bright pink play-dough, anyone?), giving the Selfridges windows a ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ vibe.

Marks and Spencer, meanwhile, has been attracting a lot of attention with their Christmas advert starring the gorgeous Rosie Huntingdon Whitely. If you haven’t seen the advert yet, then you can watch it outside Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street, as it is being played on a loop on a giant screen in one of their windows. Throughout the course of the advert, Rosie transforms from Alice (in Wonderland) to Dorothy, looking fantastic from head to toe, clad in her Marks and Spencer glad rags, naturally. The windows of Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street are clearly inspired by ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and feature a decadent Mad Hatter’s tea party, complete with Alice (aka. Rosie), the Mad Hatter (ie. the dashing David Gandy) and the other usual suspects…

I snapped out of my trance/alice in wonderland reverie when I realised that I had to go and buy my Eurostar ticket for my trip to Paris before the price increased threefold. Arriving at St Pancras International, I was immediately awestruck with the beauty and grandeur of the station… so awestruck that I walked straight past the Eurostar ticket desk and went to the check in instead. Whoops… The queue for the Eurostar ticket desk was quite fraught with tension and melodrama, with several passengers being teary-eyed about missing journeys or having to pay large price differences on their tickets. It didn’t put me at ease …. After half an hour in the queue I was imagining being stranded in London and actually having to live out of my suitcase or on top of the St Pancras street piano. But, I managed to get a relatively cheap ticket for the Saturday, thanks to a lovely member of Eurostar Staff who had the patience of a saint and helped me at the ticket desk. After making my purchase, I decided to buy Ellie some roses and headed back to East Croydon, Eurostar ticket tucked safely away in my satchel, tired but with a big smile on my face.

Capital hopping with ‘La Valise de Louise’ – London Calling

As you can tell by the title of this post… I’ve been a bit busy. But fear not! It’s all been worth the while. Read on to voyage with me and learn of my latest ventures… it all began once upon a November…..

November is a strange month, sandwiched between the autumnal novelty of Halloween (which arguably dominates October) and the unavoidable festive buzz of December. November stomps in and announces the beginning of Winter with fireworks and the ritual burning of things. In some ways, it is like an eager child begging for acceptance – encouraging us to embrace the warmth of bonfires on cold nights, and to let the decadence and glitz of the Christmas season slowly creep up upon us. It all starts with those fireworks.

November was a rather spontaneous month for me, bathed in the glow of the premature Christmas lights of London and Paris – forget about Christmas tiptoeing into my 2013, I have already spent the past few weeks being duped into believing that Christmas Eve has come early. I’ve been raptly listening to jazzy festive tunes being pumped out of sleek city sound systems and gazing up in awe at big bling-bling baubles.

Rapture? Awe? Being captivated by baubles? I’ve written a lot of posts on this blog (the majority written when I was a student, held captive by the shackles of studying) about my yearning for travel and more importantly, my desire to live life to the full as much as possible. This has been the first Winter in the past decade where I have not had to pull off the dreaded ‘nuit blanche’, those indeterminably long nights where students become essay writing machines in order to meet harrowing end of term deadlines. For me, this has often meant necking back dubious cocktails of diet coke, black coffee and Proplus tablets, silently willing the dawn chorus to pipe down and setting up over 21 alarms on my phone just in case I didn’t wake up from that ten minute power nap. Thoughts of Christmas were always on the back burner until those gloomy essays were done and dusted. However, this year there have been no academic papers to submit. I can completely focus on glittery Christmas sparkles!

So a few weeks ago, when I was asked to go to an interview in London, I decided to turn a day trip into a fully blown holiday and embrace my newly found festive freedom. I packed my suitcase (although I would later find myself cramming most of my belongings into my bright purple satchel as I surfed from sofa to sofa, hopping from tube to metro) bought a last minute ticket, got on a plane and was on my way – on the run! Ready for a big glittery adventure… first stop… London!

I arrived on Saturday 9th November, leaving a deserted Guernsey airport on a cute little local plane with puffins painted on it – I was one of five passengers. Forty five minutes, a copy of ‘The Guernsey Press’ and a free diet coke later, I was warped into a different pace of life, surrounded by jets and queues for passport control. After being ‘stranded’ for a couple of months in Guernsey, it always takes a couple of minutes to adjust to the comparative hustle and bustle of … *in melodramatic tone* the Mainland. After walking for miles, I located my case and got on the train to East Croydon – home of Dub-step, ‘the Croydon facelift” and Kate Moss – where Ellie, a friend from Durham University was waiting for me. I had forewarned her of my intentions to visit London and she had very kindly offered me a place to stay. THANKS ELLIE.

Ellie welcomed me into her very fancy student house (which was the Ritz in comparison to the house we shared together during our second year at Durham) where we had the quickest of catch ups before heading out to … Clapham. I was getting to know quite a few boroughs of London in a short space of time. We sat down in a restaurant and ordered food at 10pm after a little traipse around the area ( i.e we got a bit lost on Clapham High Street), ate with Ellie’s fellow teacher pals and then all of a sudden our plates were whisked away and the place turned into a dance bar. The staff pushed the tables to the wall, and a torrent of people appeared from nowhere and started jiving away in faux fur coats to 1direction. It was slightly surreal. I found myself being handed cocktails, accepted my fate (…having to listen to 1direction) and the night was off on a roll. We ended up leaving the bar in the early hours of the morning to get the train – we were entertained whilst we waited at the station by the characters of East Croydon who were asking us incessantly for ‘cuddles’ (no cuddles were had) and fighting over pasties – obviously a rare delicacy at three o clock in the morning. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this pasty frenzy – you’ll just have to take my word for it.

When we got back to East Croydon, I crashed into bed… my head full of plans to see musicals, sightsee, be reacquainted with KFC popcorn chicken (no KFC on Guernsey *woohoo*) and perhaps most specifically to head to Forever 21 on Oxford Street and track down a ridiculously high pair of burgundy wedges that I’d fallen in love with on the internet. Did I find those wedges? Did I get to see a musical (or… two?) You’ll have to wait for my next instalment to find out! 😉 Although in the meantime here is a picture of an excited tourist in front of Buckingham Palace… yep, it’s me.

Student Living

Lou-Lou-Louche

What’s your vice? My vices are painting my nails (somewhat messily at times), finding comfort in the bubbles of a diet coke and hoarding lotions and potions of all sorts on my make up counter. I guess I could open a spa and teahouse from my room, there’s enough soap and varieties of herbal tea in here to last a lifetime (…or at least a couple of years).

I’m not doing anything wildly exciting at the moment, just preparing for exams. Hence the pictures of nails on my blog instead of wild tales of adventure and discovery. However, it’s still possible to find delight in little things. This morning I went to the library at ridiculous o’clock in the morning (around five am) with a pal, and then we watched the sun rise whilst sat on a gnarled tree in a nearby wood. We didn’t have a camera, but imagine if you will, two students surrounded by bluebells and library books scattered across a carpet of greenery…

We walked back through the Botanic Gardens, stopping en route by a large pond near the Psychology building to look at baby tadpoles wriggling in the shallows. It was such a lovely start to the day…

Une tasse de thé…

If I’m not sipping a can of diet coke through a hot pink straw , you can bet that I will have some other sort of beverage nearby, lurking just out of sight. I’m a sucker for brightly coloured drinks, be they iced teas, slush puppies, juices or cocktails…

I guess I have made my point.

Since summer 2012, I have developed a real taste for herbal teas, and today, having just returned from the health food store, I am writing a tea blog of sorts! Writing the words “tea blog” makes me think of Grav3yard Girl, a texan youtuber who is known for her “tea vlogs”, amongst many other hilarious and fabulous things. If you, like me, are interested in disney theme parks, make-up and things related to folklore and the paranormal*, then you should give her videos a watch. If anyone else is a fan of Grav3yard Girl, then regard my following direction as an homage to her – please feel free to go and get some tea, whether it be of the English, herbal or iced variety, before I continue with the monologue that I’ve got going on here.

If you are not into your teas, then I recommend a black coffee or a white/mint hot chocolate! You can get so many different varieties of hot chocolate nowadays – I recently bought my gran ‘Turkish Delight’ flavour by Options, a great supermarket brand. There are also fancy tubs of hot chocolate that you can buy from Whittards of Chelsea – think along the lines of banoffee pie and chilli chocolate. Anyway, enough talk of these delicious chocolatey poisons, back to the subject of tea, glorious tea! I always like to have my tea in a fancy mug.

A cupcake mug will do nicely. This is my all-time favourite mug – but when I travel around, it is too precarious to sling it into a suitcase, so it must sadly remain in and the cupboard, and I must rely on my Aristocats Marie mug instead. My preferred brand of tea is PUKKA teas, which come in oh so many flavours and cost around the £2-3 bracket for a box of twenty sachets. Having managed to get through two boxes of their peppermint and liquorice flavour (weird combination, right?) over the past month, I went on a quest today to purchase some more….

On the shelf where they normally have their PUKKA teas (not sure why I am putting it in capitals, but I guess it makes for a good exclamation, PUKKAAAA!) they also had a new brand called TEAPIGS (TEAPIGS!) This is a brand that I have heard tell of, mostly in the emails that I get sent from beauty box subscriptions. I was curious to see if there would be any difference in taste, and if the TEAPIGS would live up to their elaborate packaging. They were more expensive than the others, at £3….something for 15 tea sachets. But I thought it would be interesting to try them out, seeing as I love the PUKKA version so much.

Verdict: The presentation of the sachet, or “tea temple” as they call it, is pretty, you can see the contents clearly and it is shaped like a pyramid. Taste wise, the emphasis is on the peppermint, with quite a strong (and bitter) minty aftertaste. Whilst this feels quite refreshing, I have to say that I prefer the sweet liquorice aftertaste of the PUKKA tea – it’s also quite pleasing to know that 20p of every purchase of the PUKKA flavour goes to WWF. However, I will definitely have to try some of the other TEAPIG flavours, (I noticed there was crème caramel) On the back of the TEAPIG packaging, it also gives directions on how to enjoy the tea as an iced tea. I’m not sure that this would work well for mint, however you CAN make your own ice tea just by using normal tea bags, sugar and a lemon/peaches! In Germany, they sold Arizona iced tea in really ornate bottles – very sugary but a light and refreshing alternative to juice and sodas (and of course, to the healthiest of liquids… water…)

So there you have it. The first Valise de Louise Tea Blog. I often scour the web for reviews before I buy things now (I mostly look for reviews on make up *coughOPInailpolishcough*) so I thought it was maybe time for me to write a review or two of my own. Do let me know if there are any drinks or brands that you think I should try – I’d be delighted to hear from you.

*When I was younger, my Dad used to organise tours of churches, graveyards and ancient burial grounds on the Island, and I would always end up tagging along and listening to all the tales of our Island’s rich folklore, history, witchcraft and ghostly happenings. This is a topic that has continued to interest me, (alongside many others) throughout my teens and into my adulthood. I love to tell stories, and after having enjoyed worked as a museum tour guide for six years, I think it would be great to be able to organise tours of my own one day!

“Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”

The motivation for this post comes from Dr Seuss’ book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” – if you’re feeling a little hazy, unsure of where your life is taking you or like you need some guidance, pick up this book and have a peruse. It’s a book aimed towards children, however underneath the bright colours and wacky drawings, the words contain Dr Seuss’ famous wit – a wit that knows no age boundaries. It’s not a book that I came across during my childhood but I think reading it as an adult is quite enriching and uplifting – as Dr Seuss says himself, “Will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed. (98¾% guaranteed.)”

So, where do I want to travel and what paths am I going to take? I’m still unsure. There are so many places I want to go, and sometimes I just want to be in a million different places all at once. I want to inhale floral air on hawaiian beaches, take the tram in San Francisco, explore the graveyards, vampire tours and jazz culture of New Orleans, drink butterscotch milkshakes from Zak’s Diner in Ottawa, dance on tables in Konstanz, live in Disneyland Paris and discover countless other countries. As I’m writing this, a Disney animated short springs to mind – have you ever seen “The Three Caballeros”? It’s an old classic from 1944, (including a cigar smoking parrot, ah what you could show in the old days*) where Donald Duck goes on a tour of South America and encounters various different characters along his way, including Pablo the penguin… who is a penguin (no way, Sherlock) who despairs of the prospect of spending all his days in the cold and dreams of living on a warm tropical island.

When he gets to the island, he kicks back, has a mojito or three (ok, no cocktails are actually specified but you get all inclusive holidays these days so I’m sure he would have indulged a little) and after a while the glow of the tropics starts to wear off and poor Pablo starts to miss the South Pole… the moral of the story being enjoy what you have, live in the moment, as the grass is always greener on the other side!

I have big dreams, that’s for sure, dreams of exploring, meeting new people and living in hot climates. But I’m also grateful for the present and need to make the most of every day, wherever I may be!

*Check out this French bear. He loves his tobacco.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIPSmufiM4g

I used to watch this programme when I was small, (random fact coming up) and the voice reminds me of my French grandfather!

“Think pink!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVserRvKyec

Here’s a song from “Funnyface” to listen to – a song which advocates the colour pink! It’s still cold in the UK but I’m looking forward and hoping that Spring is just around the corner… and that it will usher in flowers and sunshine, as well as a refreshing colour mix up with regards to my wardrobe of blacks and burgundies…
I went shopping yesterday, and was looking through quaint little home and decor themed shops for shabby chic style dressing table mirrors. I picked up these two tops on the way, and the little cushion, which I thought was quite elegant!

So hopefully when the weather gets warmer, I’ll be thinking a bit more pink…

Topsy-turvy Springtime

A photo from last week – snow and tulips

My room is not a speakeasy…

But if it were, it would not have prohibited alcohol to offer right now, but several varieties of herbal tea*

And electro swing music.

* I lie. I could offer the reader the dregs of a bottle of Kahlua. Student life is so darn fancy.I could also offer flowers in a cocktail glass. AND ALL THE GLITTER.

Goth with a Coffee Cup

I went to a 22nd birthday party… It was Depeche Mode themed, with dress code “Funeral Chic”. (Hey, I guess it takes all sorts) I wore my everyday clothes but transitioned from day to night by cracking out a 2012 Mac Lipstick in ‘Dramatic Encounter’ and applying it along with a lot of eyeliner… Dramatic enough??

PS…. and I found a coffee cup.