My favorite restaurant in the whole wide world

I guess everyone has a favorite restaurant. Sometimes it's in your home town, sometimes in a special town you used to live in. Obviously, when you travel you get to eat out a lot more than usual. When I was in New York as an Au-Pair, we ate out soo many times. It was fine though, we were never sick of American food and mostly always had enough money.
Double O was half way between my house and Miriam's house. So when we didn't feel like driving very far, we met up there.
It quickly turned into our favorite spot.

 

Maybe it was because of this dip that was served with the best bread before you order food (and it was for free!). Maybe it was because of the menu that had the most amazing salads, pasta, meat, fries, DESSERTS... I really don't know.
I love absolutely everything about this restaurant, the staff, the interior, the service, the prices (!)...
and now that I am finally allowed to drink alcohol as well.. the drinks are amazing. I remember one time I went there (by myself) just to have dessert and a cocktail. Haha

And this year I am going with Miriam again! I loved going with my Hostmom (who would pay) and gossip about the bartenders, but I am sooo looking forward to going with her and share the excitement with her!

http://www.doubleogrill.com/

1536 Rte 9 Wappingers Falls, NY 12590

(845) 297-7625

Countdown.. {Fringe 2013}

The Fringe is only one week away and .. I am getting nervous/excited- and what I forgot to mention on this blog is that I got a job, which means I am gonna be part of this freakin mess in August! Not on the performers side, thank God. I am just going to be selling tickets. But at 8h a day for 27 days (pretty much) straight, I am gonna be busy enough, I think.

What I am not looking forward to is all the people blocking the streets... getting somewhere on time is gonna be such a nightmare... 

USA wish list

Only 36 days left until New York- oh my goooood, I am so so excited.
I am excited for the flight, meeting Miriam in the airport, meeting my family, the kids, going on the train right next to the Hudson River... and all of that is going to happen in the very first couple of days. The part where we are going to spend all our money... yeah thats gonna happen as well- and there are some bits I am soooooo looking forward to buying- for example washi tape, loooads and loads. Dunkin Donuts' Iced Caramel Latte with skim milk and no sugar but whip cream on top.
UV Cake Vodka, as much as Customs will let me bring back (haha)- then all the stuff I need to make those pretty simple golden necklaces- and those hair bobbles from Walmart. God I love them!

And so much more stuff I can't even think of right now. I mean I love shopping here, but shopping in America is just ... my favorite. ever.

Cardiff trip {part II}

 The hungover had to be cured and we were craving American diner food, so we went to Cafe 37. It was so good, proper American choices, cheap and the Nutella milkshake-yuuummy.

 

It was such a hot day. Jeeezus. Lying in the shade was seriously the only option.

 

We went out the night before, but there are only crappy pictures. Live Lounge offered 2-4-1 cocktails, ALL NIGHT! Saay what? Need to find a place like this in Edinburgh! Strange crowd though.

Anyway, the following day we went to the beach (Ogmore-by-Sea) and we went swimming- in Britain, keep that in mind. Never thought I was gonna do that! I got bored by just lying there at some point and offered my services in hot stone treatments. The crowd was pleased, lets leave it at that.

Trip down South {part I}

I am just gonna break this down in several posts, mostly because I am tired but really wanna post these pictures now! So the rest will come tomorrow...

The train ride to Manchester was uneventful but the rest of the day was lovely- we spent some time playing with Fiona's super cute puppies, hung out in the garden with loads of beer and her Scottish friend who is convinced that I sound more Scottish than him.
We had a super nice dinner and even more drinks in town, spent all our pennies on slot machines and finally went to bed. 
It still amazes me how we just went back to being friends after 10 months of almost not speaking to each other.

So we drove down to Cardiff the next day, playing car games and eating way too much crap. We picked up Georgie from a bus stop in Cardiff and ended up in the strangest old men pub, waiting for Banana.

Now I have skipped a couple hours of buying alcohol, making food, getting ready and loads of reminiscing.
We went to Vodka Rev and had a well good time (a grammatically incorrect phrase I picked up from my lovely friends)- I got kinda obsessed with the shot boats and um... might have taken one home with me.

And after walking home for hours (it should have taken no longer than 30min) we found a Kebab shop, made some new friends and came home with our new meaty conquest (our eyes were definately bigger than our tummies as we were full after 1/5 of the kebab. oops)

Alright then, this was the first part of my trip- more to follow!

summer is here {OFF to Wales}

This week has been the warmest I have ever experienced in Scotland- on the radio they said this is the hottest it has been in years- craaazy! So just like everyone else, we headed out to the parks and tried to get a little tan, eat and hang out.

I just really wish Edinburgh had some sort of pools or lakes to swim in...


Anyway, tomorrow I am already leaving Edinburgh for a couple of days to go to Cardiff- finally meeting the English girls from camp. None of us went to camp this year so it's all gonna be a bit of shared sadness and a lot of reminiscing about last summer... OH I CANNOT WAIT!

my 3 favorite blogs {like ever}

http://www.magnoliaelectric.net

My idol, haha. She is incredibly creative and her posts are always perfectly composed, beautifully written and inspiring in every way. And now she is going to go on a 3 week road trip through California and whatnot. I am so jealous and cannot wait for her pictures.

www.thelondoner.me

I only started reading her blog around 2 months ago, but man... I am obsessed. Rose is pretty, funny, doesn't hesitate to eat loads of amazing (sometimes unhealthy) food, has super handsome friends and a super super cute dog named Custard. Her London tips are great and even better, her recipes. Gotta love her!

hhttp://lastdaysofspring.blogspot.co.uk

Marlous is a 21 year old girl from the Netherlands. Her blog is full of great tips for restaurants or stationary shops (you got me already), lunch inspiration, DIY projects, interior inspiration, travel reports and so much more. She wears beautiful outfits and I love her blog design, I just wish she would write more in English.

How I find cheap flights {tips and tricks}

{This guide is probably most helpful for Germans, given that I just booked most of my flights from Germany and not UK}

I am obviously not a super expert at this, but I have done extensive research every time I fly and found some tips and tricks in this area, so I thought I could share.
There is no one single strategy to buying cheap tickets and the best strategy is probably doing your research and being flexible.  If you want cheap flights, there is probably a catch. Flying super early or lsuper late, 10 layovers, longer flights and maybe even bad service. From time to time, there are going to be super good offers with almost no catch, but this is not going to be the usual thing.

I think in order to start your search for the cheapest flights you have to use the best search engine. One that lets you do exactly what you want to. Some of them do not let you be flexible in terms of dates, some do not want to show you the cheapest dates, some don't let you consider nearby airports etc etc. A really good starting point is Skyscanner. The search engine allows you to look at the whole month, comparing the prices for each day. It looks up flight combinations from different airlines, lets you know when you can save some money and so on. If you don't even know where you want to go, you can just put it 'everywhere' as a destination and you can see what places you can fly to for the least money.

click to enlarge

A website I recently discovered is veeery similar to Skyscanner but a tiny bit better, in my opinion. It's called Momondo. What I love about it is the feature that you can put in your priorities: save money, save time or the middle between those. There is so much more information on this site, you guy should just browse a bit. As you can see here, for popular routes you can look at a summary called "flight insight": It shows you on what day to fly, what month or what time is best and cheapest. Absolutely great feature! And if you don't know where to go, you can let momondo inspire you- tell them what kind of holiday you want and they show you destinations that are perfect for you. They also have travel guides for some destinations like New York, Paris, Prague... Go and check it out!

Now if you kind of figured out where to go and when to fly, you can start digging deeper and by that I just mean researching the shit out of it- I read this article a while ago and it is almost what I do, but my process is so much more unorganised, so I would really recommend reading it! He explains step by step what he is doing to book a cheap flight from New York to London. However, the author is American so some tips and websites might be unusable to non Americans.

What I do is quite similar, I basically check all the websites for cheap flights in the beginning, and when I found a certain flight that sounds good, I check the website of the actual airline and try to find ways to get this exact flight cheaper. They might have a sale or offer it for less. Sometimes the website with the lowest price does not have a great payment method, so I will try another website that might charge less fees and sometimes, the flight might be a bit more expensive but the total is less due to cheaper booking fees. Get my drift? I am kind of obsessed with finding the best price for stuff, and I get that some people don't have the patience to do that. However, I really do recommend checking out several websites and not just one. And here are just some general tips:

                                                                        So just now I will go into two areas that I know most about: Ryanair flights and flights to New York.

Because there is a lot more to come, please click here

What's up JULY!?

 I finally got the Robbie Williams live CD and this is probably the first CD I bought in like... 8 years or so. But this is different and I love that I have this special memory of the concert.



 

Scotland has been hit by a heat wave- saay what? Something that apparently only happens every 5 years or so. So every little green spot is now covered by half naked people trying to get a tan. I love it!

 The Military Tattoo is this major event happening every night. I heard that it's always sold out so I am soo excited that we got tickets!

I love bagpipes and all these special things happening in Edinburgh- looking forward to August!

My friend and I went to the Five Sisters Zoo on Sunday-it's the kind of zoo that takes care of animals not wanted by other zoos. They have all sorts of mismatched animals, but so so cute!

Awww, my new planner! I have been looking for a new planner/diary/agenda sort of thing, but nothing was the way I imagined.

So what's better than personalising your own?

www.personal-planner.co.uk is the place to go to! I used it to create my camp diary as well, if you guys remember. 

pillow love {project living room}

via society6.com


Ughhgh, I hate that I love pillows that much! Especially the Austin one is so cute- I just wanna get them all!

3 more TV shows- check.

Now I've got quite a lot of time on my hands, I watch even more Tv shows than during term time. Which is bad. I end up sitting on my bed for hours watching this show that I only started watching because I wanted 20 minutes of entertainment while I am eating or cooking.



So here are the three recent shows I watched-



This show is great for just simple entertaining and I used to watch Dawson's Creek when I was younger, so I even appreciate all the refernces to it.


I really like the dialogue in this one, which seems weird. And I like the characters, sort of.


Now this one I am proper obsessed with right now. I even randomly start to (trying and failing) sign while I talk. I just can't help it, I watch this show for pretty much 5 hours every day and somehow my brain thinks I need to sign, too. So I might take a sign language course, to actually do it right.

4th of July weirdness

4th July 2012 in Minneapolis

I seriously cannot believe that it is already July- half of the year is already over, say whaaat?
And all of the sudden there is the 4th July- a day which I spent in America for the past 3 years (something I cannot quite believe either). So now I am supposed to be in rainy moody Edinburgh?
Ughshgs. I am not sure how to feel about this whole thing, it just makes me miss the States so much more.
Although today is not going to be that bad- our 3 minute documentary is going to be shown in the Filmhouse here in Edinburgh on the big screen! Like proper cinema big screen.
Our University puts on this degree show and we were selected for it, which is pretty cool.
And afterwards we are gonna celebrate at this (sort of) American bar- I am seriously just looking forward to that. Nothing beats corn on the cob and ribs!

Another big consolation for not being in America right now is the fact that I am gonna see the girls from camp again in 2 weeks- we will all meet in Cardiff and hang out there for a week- I cannot wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EIFF Closing Party

So the Film Festival is officially over (except for our staff party tonight) and I wish it could go on just a biiiit longer. It's been so great to meet all these fun people and know that we have this one thing in common: a love for film.

Before the party we were invited to watch "Not Another Happy Ending" in the fancy Festival Theatre (see picture) and walked the red carpet in a very unspectacular way. The film was a really beautiful film set in Scotland, however the story was a bit predictable. 
After that we celebrated one more time with filmmaker guests and everyone else who was invited. There were free drinks, free food and dancing in underground caves. It was totally crammed until the end but after midnight we finally had space to dance until the very last song.

I had a great time and will definately miss these kinds of parties.