London

Goodbye 2016…

This was a full year for us… A very good one, but a very full one. I know that most people view 2016 as a bad year because of all the atrocities that happened all around the world and all the amazing people we lost, but I honestly think that it is more a matter of how we view everything surrounding us. Bad things happen all the time, people kill other people for the most ridiculous reasons all the time and this is happening ever since we have decided that we are the supreme species on this planet. The only difference right now is that fact that it is way easier to come into contact with news, information on what is happening in the world than it was before. Also, unfortunately, death is a natural thing and people should understand that is part of the cycle of life. We all lost loved ones throughout the years, and yes, a lot of great people passed this year, but maybe that is only due to the fact that we all knew those great people tanks to the fact that information started circulating easier from one point in history onward, and, honestly, we should be grateful that we all got to know and admire those great people that passed in 2016. People, famous people, died in 2015 as well, but maybe they were not as famous as the ones that passed in 2016. Do not get me wrong, I was saddened by each and every obituary that I read this year, but I was just as saddened by the innocent unknown people that died this year due to politics or religion just as I was also heartbroken about the close people that I lost this year. Again, death is a natural part of life and we should all accept it and stop blaming 2016 for all the people that we lost. I just needed to get this out there as I am so sick and tired of everyone just whining about 2016.

Moving along… 2016 was a good year for us. Most of last years resolutions were achieved and the ones that we did not achieve will probably be on the 2017 list and there is nothing wrong with that. At the beginning of every year, there is one thing that I always wish for just as the clock strikes midnight: that no matter what, everything will be ok in the end! This is my one constant wish for the new year ever since I can remember and by the time the year finishes it always is because you know what, this is what evolving is all about: learning from every experience and making sure that we do not make the same mistakes again! Eventually everything turns out to be ok in the end.

That said, I am not going to be a hypocrite and not acknowledge that this year was a very good one for the two of us despite what happened throughout the world. We got to safely travel (London, Madrid, Milano, Paris) quite a lot, we got to finally start this blog and most important of it all we managed to have a bundle of joy on the way. All of these things were on our list last year and we managed to tick all of them thus making us very happy. We also managed to evolve as a couple and right now I feel closer to D than ever and happier and I finally understood what evolving in a relationship means. This, on the long term means the most to me as I feel that we will be a very good team in raising our daughter which gives me a sense of peace and calm inside that I so need right now, this close to the delivery date.

Like I said, this was an amazing year for us and I am sure that 2017 will be a great one as well. The featured image of this post is a collage of the best 9 pics (most liked) on my Instagram, but it does not depict my favourite moments of 2016 therefore I felt the need to show a few of my favourite moments from this year at the end of the post. As you have probably guessed it, the next post will be about our 2017 resolutions!

we started evenlymatched.eu on the 19th of March 2016

London

Madrid – where our bundle of joy was conceived

my new ink

D turned 32

28th of May – the day we found out about our bundle of joy

31st of May – our Wedding Anniversary

Milan

13th of July – Celebrating 7 years together and 3 years of marriage

Paris

First Pic

UNTOLD Festival

Her little angel face at 22 weeks

D‘s new finished half sleeve

32 weeks pregnant – Baby Shower – 27th of November

the nursery

Enchanted Forest Christmas Tree

Our 2016 Christmas Family Card!

December 31, 2016December 31, 2016

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London diet

So…let’s recap…we wrote about our London experience overall and the new places we discovered, showed you what I wore and I think now the time has come to talk about food.

Day one was all about street food at Borough Market. D had an amazing burger from Whiskey Ginger and he urges you to give that place a try if you ever find yourself in that area, I had a cheddar (everything seems yo have cheddar in Britain – yayyyy) toast from one of the food joints over there- no idea what it’s called, but it was the only one selling only cheese sandwiches. Of course we had a few glasses of white wine with our food (which reminds me, we should do another post on wines asap).

On day two, our friend took us to a thai restaurant on Panton Street 35 called Busaba. Now let’s be clear, I’ve eaten thai before (in Europe), but this was by far the best place we’ve tried. As a price range, just to give you and idea, there were four of us and we each ate a main course plus sides and a bottle of wine, and the check came around 100£, so i’d say it’s ranged medium-low so you won’t feel like your paying a fortune to eat great food in central London.

Day three was ‘ladies lunch’ because my friend and I had lunch at Sager+Wilde, which is located in the Bethlan Green area. This restaurant/bar is is decorated in a typical hipster British style, so the ambiance is really nice for lunch. The food is great and their wine list is quite long, but we had Cava Brut mainly because we’re girls. It’s not an expensive place, also on the medium-cheap side and the staff is very friendly, so the overall experience is a nice one.

In the meantime, D had a long walk on the streets of the Bethlan Green area (simply put, he didn’t want to listen to all our womanly talk) and found this amazing little shop filled with chocolate goodies called Dark Sugars. Of course we couldn’t leave the area without tasting the most amazing chilly hot chocolate ever and a bag filled with chocolate truffles and other specialities. If you’re ever in London, do not miss this place.

As if we didn’t have enough sweets, when we got to our tube station (Canary Wharf), we found there the most amazing cupcake counter called Lola’s Cupcakes. I honestly think the photos talk for themselves. In retrospect, I am very happy that during my postgrad I had tons to study and no time to explore as otherwise I would’ve been overweight after an entire year in London.

On our last day we stumbled upon Scott’s on Mount Street. This is a high-end restaurant located in a beautiful area right in the centre of London. It mostly serves fish dishes, but you can also find in their menu the usual appetizers and steaks plus they also have a complete wine list. It’s more on the expensive side, as D‘s steak and my burrata plus half of litre of white wine took us at about 100£ in total. From what I could see, if you want to eat dinner you’ll probably need a reservation as we got there at an odd hour (about 1 o’clock in the afternoon) and they could barely find us a table for only an hour and a half, obviously by the time we left the place was full. But if you’re looking for a classy place with great staff and amazing food, Scott’s the place to go to.

Lastly, since our flight was delayed, we thought we’d have a nice airport dinner at Terminal 5, Heathrow. The most appealing eatery there seemed Pilots Bar. The food was very good, D had chicken tikka masala and I had the mushroom soup, both paired with a glass of white wine. I know we don’t seem like we’re complex when it comes to wine, but we actually do drink red and rose, it’s just that this weekend we felt like drinking white. And no, we are by no means the type of wine drinkers that carefully match their choice of wine with the food, we simply drink what we feel like drinking in the moment.

This was the last post on our London weekend. I hope you didn’t think this was evolving into a London blog, but in all honesty, this city is so amazing that it does deserve more than one post.

April 1, 2016

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Sunny London…

Yes, we were lucky enough to catch one of the five sunny days London gets per year. It wasn’t an entire day, as the weather was this good the day we arrived, but I’ll settle for half a day and consider ourselves lucky. When we left Bucharest, on Friday, it was literally winter, but when we landed in London it felt like it was a May day.

What does one do when it’s sunny and warmer than usual in London? Wears a crop top! Mind you, I did have a cardigan and a knit jacket over it, but still, I was wearing a crop top in London, in March! Yup, as you’ve sensed by now, this is yet another post featuring yours truly, trying to do fashion again. Obviously I’ve posted the Hat before this one as I like those pics more and I wanted to make an oxblood statement.

Since D and I (mostly D) decided that we only need one piece of large luggage for both of us, I couldn’t take too many pairs of shoes with me, so I wore the pictured ones two days out of the four we spent there. Who would’ve thought that I needed more then 1/2 of a large bag for four days? And yes, the luggage issue was the reason I lacked in the shopping department during our stay in London. Worry not, I didn’t leave London empty handed.

Back to the fashion post… For some reason, writing about clothes, shoes and bags feels very unnatural to me, unlike the totally natural feeling I get whenever I shop for them, that’s like second nature. You’ll probably notice that I tend to drift off during these posts. And…here I go drifting again.

The outfit… Since the weather was lovely in a British way, and since you already know about the shoes and the crop top, let’s move on… We were in London after all so, on top of the crop top (ZARA from a few years ago), I had an oxblood cardigan also from ZARA – this cardigan is a basic item for me and I think I have it in at least four colours. A cardigan wouldn’t have been able too keep me warm enough in London, so I topped everything with an oversized knit jacket which has a reddish tint and matched the pattern on my crop top nicely.

I’ll briefly mention my jeans as I intend on doing a full post on the subject just to prove to D that I do need all my pairs of jeans for different occasions (same will go for my stilettos). Drifting off… Back to the jeans, they’re the Skin-zee from Diesel and I think I have had them for about two years. I love the way the high-rise goes with the crop top. In my humble opinion, there are two types of skinny jeans out there:

The ones that look amazing on, feel like you’re in a cast and you need assistance getting both in and out of them
And the ones that look great, feel comfortable and no one needs to help you in and out of them

London Calling!

London, oh how I love London! For some reason, I think London has it all! This won’t be a post on all the touristy stuff you can visit in London as you can buy a travel guide for that and anyway, the post would be too long. I’ve visited all those landmarks ages ago and this weekend was all about discovering new and interesting places and taking D to a musical. When we landed on Heathrow the sun was shining and it was warmer than usual considering it is March, so as expected, the entire London population was outside. Londoners tend to do that as they only get about five days of sun per year.

We decided to check into our hotel and then take long walks as far away from the tourist areas as possible. For the duration of the weekend we chose Marriott West India Quay hotel, located in the Canary Wharf area. We chose this hotel for two reasons:

I couldn’t believe any hotel in London could provide 30 sqm per double room
I was really curious how the area looked now

As I told D, when I was a postgrad student this entire area was under construction, so when we booked the hotel I didn’t have high expectations from this area especially since the room rates were quite low for a five-star hotel in London. But wow, has this area evolved since I’ve seen it last. It looks really nice and new but it still has a British feeling to it.

Let’s get back to the hotel room for a bit as this is really important. I’ve stayed at different hotels in London, mostly from the Radisson Blu chain and I have to tell you that although the service was comparable to Marriott, the rooms were not. Sure, they were nicely decorated, but they had tops 18 sqm, while Marriott gives you about 30 sqm. The room also has large windows, which gave us a great view over the area, spectacular really at night, and the daylight was amazing for photos and not to mention the top-quality service that you can find in any Marriott hotel. I totally recommend this hotel for London especially because you have the underground at about a 10 min walk distance and the DLR at a two minute walk distance. The area also has a lot of nice restaurants and three underground shopping areas. Because Canary Wharf is on the Jubilee line, you literally can reach Oxford Street in 20 mins tops.

As it was sunny outside, we decided to meet a dear friend of mine at Borough Market (this is one of the hidden gems of London). You can find here only British produce and I have to tell you, I was really impressed by the multitude of products sold here. There we enjoyed a few glasses of wine and a burger from Whiskey Ginger, after that we were beat, so beat, that we decided to order room-service for the following morning as there was absolutely no way we were going to make it to breakfast, especially since we had only slept for about two hours in the last 24 hours.

Day two was the Mad Hatter day, so the weather was mainly British. D and I took a long walk in the morning and in the afternoon we ate at Busaba (we’ll talk about our London diet in a later post) and then, it was time for the musical. We ended up going to Sunny Afternoon, a prized musical. It was really good, full of great music and D and I loved it! If you’re in London do not miss a good musical! They are goosebumps-great! Despite the fact that one tends to walk all day to visit the landmarks in London, and by the time the musicals start (at about 7:30), all you really want to do is go to bed, believe me when I say that a musical in London is priceless!

After the musical it was time to get some “cocktails with a view” as my friend likes yo call The Duck and Waffle at Heron Tower. The view from up there is indeed breathtaking (we were at around floor 40) and if you get there by 10 o’clock at night you don’t have to stay in line even on a Saturday night. Don’t know what to tell you about the cocktails as we both drank whisky. Needless to say that when we got to our hotel room D instantly fell asleep.

Day three was for long strolls as most of London was closed because of the Easter holiday. We visited the Bethnal Green area, which, in my opinion is “hipster quarter”. We had a nice late lunch at Sager+Wilde and D found this adorable shop filled with chocolate truffles (Dark Sugars)- details on that in the next food post. As usual, we finished the day at another cocktail bar, but this time it was and underground one. It’s called Well and Bucket and besides the great cocktails you can also buy there small meals. We chose the Oxtail Chilly Cheese Fries, which were a combo of fries, meat (oxtail), cheddar and chilly, and honestly, they were delicious.

On our last day in London,we only had about two hours to spare, so we took a walk on Mount Street and stopped for wine and lunch at Scott’s. The entire area is beautifully British and all in all a pleasurable last walk before our departure. To be honest, we bumped into that area on the way to the official Mini store, because my car deserves a little present from London.

Since I don’t want to write a 20 page essay on London, I’ll stop here, even though I could talk/write about it forever. Can’t wait to get back already!

March 30, 2016March 30, 2016

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The Mad Hatter!

All things British…weather included! Packing for London, I had no idea what to expect, it is March after all… But March in London tends to be just as bipolar as March in Bucharest, it would appear. Of course, after spending a year in London, I already knew that. After about a week of intense thinking at what I should pack (I did need something trendy and fun as I was planning on doing a few fashion posts over there), an hour before I actually started packing, it hit me: A HAT!! I mean, no, I don’t usually, if ever until now, wear a hat, but hey, a hat is British, right? To prove a point, I’ve actually had (H&M) the hat you can spot in the pics for two years now and it still had the tags on on Thursday when I started packing. That alone should be an indicator of how often I venture into the hat-world, but for some reason, I thought it was time to wear it and London seemed the right place. Seemed…

As you can see, it is an oxblood felt hat, so it’s totally appropriate for the London weather. Starting from the hat, I packed almost everything I had that matched the oxblood colour theme and was clean (lingerie included-I like to match everything). Since I had only come to the oxblood theme a few hours before departing, I only had a few things clean as oxblood is one of my fave colours for autumn/winter and I tend to wear it a lot.

I had to improvise since my favorite oxblood items were unavailable, and I think that this colour works nicely with navy blue, black and red, which in my opinion, are all British looking colours.

I wore this outfit on the second day in London, because when we got there, on Friday, it was hot and sunny and a felt hat just didn’t seem appropriate. Worry not, as London weather came to its senses on Saturday- drizzle, cold, windy and all the nice things British weather has to offer. So, on that morning, I decided I was finally going to wear my hat for the first time and for an entire day (when we’re on vacation, we leave our room in the morning and come back at night). Little did I know what wearing a hat implied…on a windy day! Basically what happened was that in the first few minutes I got out of the hotel I decided that:

My head does not have the appropriate shape to wear a hat- I have no idea how those cool girls that always wear hats do that without actually losing their hat and without bumping into things (I had tunnel vision)
It was windy! I really need some tips! Does wearing a hat on a windy day implies using sticky tape to prevent the loss of the hat?

That being said, I tried wearing my hat casually and relaxed for the photos, non-casually when it was raining (one hand on top of my head) and not at all all the other times. Basically, I’d say that I spent most of my Saturday carrying it in my hand.

Overall, I’d say that wearing a hat is, like all the other cool things, a complicated matter. D kept making fun of me, telling me that being fashionable requires sacrifice, and in retrospect, I think he was right. I definitely looked like a mad person between shots, hence today’s post name.

Getting back to the fashion part of this post, I’ve paired the now infamous hat with oxfords (because…London) that have a little oxblood detail on them. These shoes are incredibly comfortable and I got them from Bagatt, for next to nothing, last autumn. I have no idea where I got the navy dress from as I’ve had it for three or four years and I think it goes nicely with my latest FURLA addition (travel exclusive from British Airways-I got it on my way to London). Because we had autumnish weather that day, my Burberry scarf, a black leather jacket and an oxblood cardigan kept me warm, alongside my black Calvin Klein tights. I always feel comfortable wearing a dress and I love the feeling of wearing a dress and a leather jacket, and right now, looking at the pics D took of me, I’m starting to like the whole hat idea (maybe I’ll do that more often if someone decides to tell me the secret of actually keeping it on my head).

Overall, the day I first wore a hat was interesting. I am not going to emphasise on London in this post as there will be a full post on that later this week. Well, this concludes my hat experience and the first of a few posts to come on London (the city closest to my heart).