Friday, September 30, 2011

Back from Bath, London and Paris!

Ahoy! Back from the vacation and suffering some majorly post-holiday blues right now. It's just so nice to get away from everything and not have to work! But in order to afford nice holidays, one needs to work and therein lies the irony, lol.

England at this time of the year was lovely! The weather was sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny and never went above 18 degrees celsius. Sooooo niceeeee.

Bath especially I loved. Not just because of the heavy Jane Austen influence there but the entire city is just really delightful and has so much history to it.

There was a hiccup to the early part of the trip when dum dum de dum, the airline lost my luggage and I practically arrived in Bath with the clothes off my back. Worse was I had to skip the Jane Austen Promenade Walk on the first day of the festival as my Regency dress was in that luggage. I was pretty crushed for the first and second day then. But such is life and the vagaries of the economy airlines that one decides to take =( The luggage was finally found and delivered to my hotel in Bath on the evening of the third day but in the end, I still missed the Jane Austen Festival in its entirety.

However, I couldn't leave Bath without wearing my Regency dress and bonnet and taking some photos!


Photos taken at The Kennard, which was the hoteI stayed in during Bath and which really was the prettiest little place as well!

The rest of the trip was spent in London plus a day trip to Paris. And, I did manage to find the BtssB store in Paris when I was there! I am rather proud of the fact that I managed to successfully navigate the streets of Paris, armed with a map, to find the store on Ledru Rollin, heh!


The store was empty when I entered but the shopgirl greeted me with a smile which was encouraging since one does sometimes hear about rudeness at the Paris shop offshoot. Dir en grey was playing in the background as well when I was there, lol. While I controlled myself and didn't purchase anything from the store (I was tempted though!), I was pleasantly surprised to find the store stocked with a good array of items. The shop is located in a rather quiet suburban area of Paris and the nearest Metro station is Ledru Rollin so it is slightly off the beaten track. But if you have some time to kill in Paris, I recommend tracking down the shop for a visit. Also, located near enough to the shop is Jardin des Plantes, which is a beautiful botanical garden with a museum and lovely for photos in loli finery as well =)

More on the sights of Bath and daily outfits worn in next post!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Ramblings plus an As and When Alice photo

Sorry for the intermittent postings for the last few weeks! I don't want to be one of those one-hit loli blogs that one sees so often popping up and disappearing within a few months although I can understand why that happens. Real life just gets in the way A LOT plus it takes effort to write as well. And write interestingly and well.

For me, it's a lot of real life going on. I'm buying a new apartment that hasn't even been built yet. The apartment flat will be built and ready in about 3-4 years' time. While I'm looking forward to a new house one day, this means the spending budget will be tight as the cash downpayment for the new place needs to be settled soon. Hence, no new lolita purchases since a few months ago and for the next few months as well as I've been madly saving.

Between a new house and loli dresses, I would naturally prioritise the first without much thought into it! But ah, it was still a little hard though, to go through the summer sale period and not be purchasing one or two brand-new dresses on discount.

Besides the new house, the trip to UK is finally approaching! I fly off to merry olde England next Thursday. The UK trip will include a one-day trip to Paris and I'm still considering whether to make a visit to the Paris BtssB store for fun. I don't know if it's worth the effort though as I'm only doing a day trip and I've heard that the BtssB shop person isn't very welcoming to tourists (but this is hearsay and I really don't know the veracity of snooty Parisian shop people at Btssb).

And for London, I definitely want to be hitting Camden Town for the second-hand clothing shops!

I won't be bringing any loli to wear during the trip. I will be bringing a few Naoto Gramm dresses to wear but that's it. Mostly due to the fact that I'm actually rather nervous of drawing attention to myself in loli in London. I would be more confident of wearing loli in Tokyo since yes, I've done that before and not to mention, Japan is the birthplace of loli fashion, lol. But I'm leery of being a foreigner, wearing loli in a Western setting and therefore, the chance of drawing unwanted attention...

Anyway! To make up for pelting boring aspects of my life at you, here's another Alice in Wonderland inspired photoshoot! The photo showcases an Alice inspired dress from New York Couture, an online shop that specialises in one of a kind outfits. While not loli, they do have some rather cute dresses up on their collection page.

I  love how the 'I have cramps' model-esque pose is now associated with couture.