Bye February

Sometimes C's words ring in my mind and I wonder what's the opportunity cost of me being here, what am I missing out on back there. But I've always believed that what's meant to be will eventually be, so I'll just wait and let whatever happen, happen. I've also realised it's physically impossible to be involved in everything and I guess the Venn diagram was rather true. I'm literally spending half of my days sleeping in my bed, yet I'm not really feeling that apologetic over it.

Today's the last day of February. I'm one month closer to home. I miss home, but I can't be more grateful to be here too.

Budapest Trip: Day 1

Finally sorted out my photos from the Budapest trip. Well, day 1 at least. Regretted taking so many selfies HAHA filtering is a chore. I've uploaded day 1 photos on fb, those that weren't edited hahaha. Anyway I wanted to blog about it before I forget what happened haha the Barcelona trip and Edinburgh trip memories are getting blurry already. All photos taken with my iPhone because I left my camera behind by mistake. So, here goes.

Day 1

Left hall for Heathrow Airport early morning with C and XP, and we reached on time and everything went pretty smoothly haha. Also realised that the more we travel, the lesser stuff we brought around. My handcarry luggage was only half full hahaha.

Ootd taken by C! Wearing my Miss Selfridge sweater, Topshop jeans and Timberlands. My other pair of La Redoute boots are spoilt. :( They didn't exactly last very long since I only got them in October last year argh.

We actually took a bus to board the plane! I always find it really cool to board the plane directly instead of via the boarding gate tunnel (?) HAHA but this would never happen in Changi Airport LOL. Anyway, the flight was about 3 hours but we landed earlier than the stated time. Budapest is also one hour ahead of London. After we arrived, we got tickets for the bus, then we changed to the metro to get to our hotel, which was very near the city centre. The public transport fares were a lot cheaper than London's, we got the 10 pieces discount booklet since there were 5 of us and it was only about 3k HUF, which is less than £10 for 10 single fares.

City centre and selfie LOL. Also realised that we should've changed our currency in Budapest because the rates were better! Note to self next time when I go back to visit. The pastries in Hungary are also REALLY GOOD, they have this chain store called "Princess" at almost every metro station and everything is less than £1 each. I especially liked the hot dog pastries and the strawberry croissants!

View of the Szechenyi Lanchid while finding the hotel. Quite cloudy hence the poor lighting. After we had checked in, we headed for Castle Hill which was only about 10 min walk away. We wanted to get food, and the hotel receptionist said there are a couple of restaurants there (which we later realised were rather pricey as compared to other places but nvm!!).

Walked up instead of taking the tram because tram tickets were quite expensive and it was a relatively short walk!

Saw this slanted lamp post hehe.

First Hungarian snack! Traditional Chimney cake. It was GOOD.

Then, we went to this restaurant called the Tarnok Cafe & Bier (if I'm not wrong HAHA had to use Google maps to find the location). The meal was really good, they had set menus for only 2900 HUF for a starter, main and dessert.

Goulash and Hungarian sausage with rice (IT WAS BRILLIANT).

Something with chips (I forgot) and Hungarian pizza.

DESSERT. I never got to find out the name of it because it was just called dessert on the menu but seriously Hungarian cakes are amazing. I'm not even a fan of milk and cream but the cream was really light and fluffy. Craving it again now HAHA.

Anyway, by the time we finished, it was almost dark. Went to a nearby supermarket to buy water and unfortunately we all bought sparkling water by mistake because none of us could read the words LOL. We only realised after we'd opened to drink. And they had Lipton mango tea! So we bought 1.5L bottles of those.

Really scenic night view of the Szechenyi Lanchid (chain bridge).

Attempted a couple of panorama shots hahaha. No filter and lousy iPhone camera hence the terrible quality. Anyway, we went to Vaci Utca after that, which is the Hungarian equivalent of Oxford Street LOL. We were trying to google for the address and I actually typed in "Hungary Oxford Street" before realising it's not actually called Oxford Street. X_X Didn't buy anything because most of the stores were closed and we couldn't really compare the prices with UK. We went to H&M and Zara but prices were around the same I guess? And Zara had very little of the sale stock left haha. But C and I bought a pair of flats each from New Yorker! They were on sale for ONLY 290 HUF which is like 80p LOL so we had to buy them! They came in pastel colours and C got the baby blue pair and I got the beige pair. We both preferred the other's colour but there were no sizes. :(

Holding our purchases outside the store. It was my only clothing purchase of the trip!

Night view of the Basilica. Then we went to Starbucks and then the gelato place! It's called Gelarto Rosa and it's very near the Basilica. They had a lot of flavours like pistachio and A LOT OF SORBETS. I love sorbets. It was 500 HUF for 2 flavours, so I got the lemon and strawberry sorbet. Was seriously watching in awe as the person crafted it petal by petal! I had never seen rose gelato before HAHA but later I found out Amorino in Soho also has it (but more expensive of course).

Crossing the bridge to get back to the hotel. The lights were really pretty! And yup that concludes the first day in Budapest hehe. Will post about the other days when I have time! x

Budapest Trip: Day 2

Day 2 in Budapest was on bike! We wanted to cycle to this little island in the middle of the river, and it was lucky that all 5 of us could cycle haha. Woke up rather later so we only left the hotel at 9am. We went to Costa Coffee first for breakfast and I wanted to try their macaron latte! Still not sure if they have it in London yet because I don't really drink coffee.

It actually tasted really normal. :( So maybe it was meant to be consumed with macarons or something.

Walked around Vaci Utca to look for the bicycle rental place and it took us a while before we found it. The place is called Yellow Zebra bicycle rental, and their bikes were yellow with the zebra face on the wheels too! It was really cute haha. I strongly recommend anyone who's visiting Budapest to check them out. We had to pay a deposit of 10k for the 5 of us, which was about 2k per person. But they have special rates if you rent beyond a certain number of hours or something, because we had the bikes from morning until 6pm (right before they closed) and it was only 2125 HUF per person which was really worth it!

Cycling in Budapest was surprisingly NOT dangerous at all. I cycled occasionally back in sg, but I wouldn't dare to cycle in London lol. One thing is that they have special cycling lanes and tracks just for cyclists, and the other thing is that the Hungarian drivers are all so courteous! And they don't drive that fast either. We went to this bakery called Marodi first because we were quite hungry and they were said to have really nice cakes and pastries. Began drizzling halfway but luckily it was just a light drizzle and we took turns to go into the bakery to buy food. Ended up spending a long time there HAHA and there was also free wifi from the Macs next door so I was updating instagram and replying whatsapp LOL.

--- Incomplete post but publishing it from my drafts anyway ---

Vintage Adventures

Came back from Budapest yesterday! I'll post on Budapest soon after I'm done sorting out the photos haha but I wanted to write about Brick Lane first so that I can clear some memory space on my phone and also so that everything will be in chronological order. But Budapest was really great hehe I think it's my favourite city so far! Pity we didn't get to explore a lot of areas due to lack of time and I really wanted to climb the hill hahaha.

Anyway was at Brick Lane last Sunday with A and YX! First time at a London vintage market / east side of London. Some photos from my phone but there are still lots of photos in the camera. I find it more convenient to use my phone though since I rarely bring the camera out.

Ootd taken by YX while A was getting a coffee. :P Wore pink because Pantone's colour of the year is Orchid! Somehow I've also been seeing lots of people wearing pink around. The dress is from Reko and I really love it! Discovered this brand through Topshop because they had a Reko for Topshop collection a few years back. All of their dresses are handmade and they usually do very limited pieces, but the quality is fantastic, especially the material.

Some murals (apparently we were at the wrong end of Brick Lane because we discovered more murals at the end ...)

Also dropped by Spitalfields which was really near, but eventually went back to the Brick Lane side because there wasn't much stuff. We went back to the Sunday UpMarket for lunch. There were lots of food stalls around and they had food from almost everywhere, Asian, European, Middle Eastern, etc. Went with Chinese food in the end because I miss mix veg rice hahaha. On the whole it was quite like Camden market and the food around was rather similar to Camden's too.

Really tempting cupcakes from this stall called Nina's Bakes! They have an Instagram page too. Didn't try in the end because I wanted to get a drink instead and so I got this apple juice made from Granny Smith's, ginger and a bit of mint.

The other stall which A got her yoghurt smoothie from.

After lunch, we went to this store called Blitz. It reminded me of Oakham Market in Singapore, like the general feel and the stuff they stocked. And they had a basement too! Lots of vintage apparels and accessories.

Discovered this whole table of shoes. Photo credits to A. :>

Vinyl sales at this other market.

Blackberries. These were quite cheap at only 50p for one punnet.

Padlocks on a fence outside Shoreditch Station. This is apparently called the love fence and it was so pretty! We took a lot of photos here haha but everything is in my camera because the phone camera quality isn't as good. Headed over to Tate Modern for Topshop after that!

Pretty view from St Paul's Bridge on the way back.

Need to sort out Budapest photos soon but my room is in a mess right now and I haven't unpacked argh ... Had really dry skin after coming back so I've been spamming water too. And I came back to a bouquet of dried roses yesterday I was so sad. :'( Tried to revive them with warm water and re-cutting the stems but it didn't work ...

Didn't really do much today but sorted out my accounts and returned a TON of stuff lol. Also had late lunch / dimsum with M and AN but L couldn't make it. Went to Gerrard's Corner again so didn't take many photos since most of the stuff were the same as what we'd ordered the last time. After that I went to Somerset House to check out LFW haha.

Okay really tired now gonna sleep already omg last day of reading week tomorrow/today :(