Back in October, Lies and I headed to London for a visit to our friend Camiel. Trips like these are my favorite: no pressure, no tight schedule, but quality time with friends and seeing the city through the eyes of a local. We spent our time in Camiel’s neighborhood in South London, Hackney Wick (here’s a tip for pizza and beer and brunch) and on the other side of the city, in Brixton Village (see Laura’s guide for tips), Clerkenwell and Dulwich. We savored the food at local markets, chatted with inspiring artists (like painter Jo Dennis) and artisans (like this leather bike saddle designer), explored the city on our rental bikes, enjoyed some down time at Camiel’s impressive home, marveled at the pink plastic beauty of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by Selgascano and discovered the breathtaking garden room of the Barbican. I have many pictures of that last one in store for you later, but for now I’m leaving you with these fragments of the rest of our trip to London!
With the weather getting colder and work taking over these past few weeks, I can’t help but reminisce about past holidays during warmer times. One of those trips that I haven’t shared yet, was this summer’s stay in Berlin. After spending some time in Leipzig and exploring Melt! festival, I figured it was about time I’d make it to Berlin. Together with one of my best friends, I finally headed to the city that had been on the top of my to do list for quite some time. We spent our stay there wandering the streets of different neighborhoods, sipping coffee, riding our bikes, exploring architectural gems, sleeping on a boat(!) and drinking beers. After the intense experience of Melt! festival, these few laid back days were exactly what we needed before getting back to Belgium. I did fulfill my blogger duties though and photographed a few places that I discovered. Maybe you already saw one of them in a previous blogpost, but I’ll share the others with you soon. For now, these photos bring up lovely summer memories while I’m already looking forward to my next trip. Curious where I’m going? Here‘s a tip.
When Accor hotels invited me to spend the weekend in Leuven, it felt like the perfect opportunity to rediscover my former hometown. I’ve lived in Leuven for five years during my architecture studies and even though it felt too small after my return from Lisbon, I’ve always loved living there. While Leuven really is small, it also has a lot of things to offer. There’s a lively creative scene with talented musicians and artists, each year the architecture students of the first master turn an abandoned building upside down for Existenz, while the students from Loko do the same for Ithaka, you’ll find lots of beautiful architecture – both old and new – in the streets of Leuven and (not unimportant) food and drinks are quite affordable thanks to the many students here.
Paulien and I stayed in the Hotel ibis Budget Leuven centrum, which turned out to be the perfect starting point for our weekend as it is located next to the city’s train station and close to pretty much everything. (And for architecture lovers: it has some pretty interesting concrete detailing on the facade!) As the big draw was taking place in the city during that weekend, it was the perfect moment to stroll through the streets of Leuven and admire the many beautiful drawings in the shop windows, take numerous coffee breaks, explore the antique and artisan markets, devour delicious vegetarian hot dogs, get a new haircut and enjoy the sun and beautiful plants in the botanical garden.
We discovered a lot of interesting new places that popped up since I left the city (I already blogged about one here), so I’ll soon share them here in a city guide and highlight my favorites in their own blogpost. For now I already wanted to share a few fragments of the atmosphere in Leuven and inspire you to book your very own getaway to this lovely tiny city.