Baked Peach & Apricot Pavlova with Honey & Pistachios.

And just like that Christmas has been and gone. The back end of this year had me powering through life that I didn't have the time to get as excited about Christmas as I normally would have and now having some time off, and the luxury of retrospect, I wish I had of been more festive! Christmas really is my favourite time of the year. I love having our family all together and having the whole day to spend with one another without any time restraints. With age I am really starting to enjoy giving gifts more so than receiving them and of course, Christmas Day means we pull out all the food stops for an incredible lunch to share together.

Alas I bottled up all of that unused excitement in the weeks prior to Christmas to deliver quite possibly the best pavlova ever on Christmas Day. Three days on I am still super chuffed with it! Little does anyone know it's actually a Jamie Oliver recipe from this years Christmas edition of Woolworths' Fresh magazine. It was sweet, but not sickly, soft but with delicious crunchy bits from the meringue and the pistachios and slightly sticky from the honey - an unexpected yet very pleasant delight which was met with raving reviews from fellow family members. What more could you want on Christmas Day?!

Amsterdam.

The last stop of our whirlwind two week Europe taste tester was beautiful Amsterdam. The first thing my mind thinks of remembering Amsterdam was just how lost we got every.single.time we went to go somewhere... and it was not because of happy herbs, I promise! After navigating London and Paris without too many problems we were a little dumbfounded at how we kept messing up the streets and directions we were meant to be walking in! If anyone else has experienced this or has a reason why we might have been getting so lost I would appreciate hearing it!

After having an amazing run of sunny weather we arrived to a cold and wet day for our first full day in Amsterdam. As days like this are best spent indoors we made our way up to the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum is the museum of the Netherlands and houses artworks and artefacts from the Middle Ages to present day. We ended up spending half a day inside the Rijk as there was so much to see. As we were making our way out my sister Ruby found an exhibition called 'New for Now' - the origins of fashion magazines. To say I was enthralled would be an understatement. I often wonder how things begin but it never really crossed my mind that magazines had to start from somewhere. Now I know that magazines started, of course, in Paris. Women of the upper echelons would wear their finest items to a park in Paris on a Sunday afternoon and artists would draw what they saw which would be distributed in to a fortnightly magazine. I might have to do a whole post on this because I have some really amazing photos of the illustrations that continue to inspire me to this day. 

Other 'things to do and see' on our list for our two-ish days in Amsterdam were the flower markets, Vondelpark, Rembrandt Square, Spuirstraat 199 (street art area) and De 9 Straatjes (vintage shopping, cool cafes). Riding bikes has never been a strong suit for us Paton girls (we grew up on a hill so we never bothered with bikes!) so we went without hiring bikes and getting in the way of all of the Dutch bike rider extraordinaires. However we did eat magnificent Dutch pancakes and cheese croquettes that I will remember fondly until next time. There was a calmness about Amsterdam that I quite enjoyed compared to the hustle and bustle of the other cities we visited. Maybe this is because everything is surrounded by water. Maybe it's because all of the people need to be active to ride around from A to B. Or maybe it's because of how they unwind? It was really pleasant to have some sort of calmness before returning home to the race of every day life. 

Paris: A Moveable Feast.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” 
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Bonjour! It's been a long time between travel posts. I apologise profusely. Here we are now, in Paris, the city of romance. From these images above I hope you can see why. On our first day in Paris we headed out to see the most notable sights: the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and the Champes Elysees. I truly underestimated the popularity and scale of people who flock daily to snap away at these famous monuments. It was exhausting to walk through the teaming crowds of people and to watch them all crowding around these magnificent icons, selfie sticks in tow. We managed to negotiate the crowds to take our own token tourist shots before being quickly squeezed out. 

After a massive afternoon of walking and negotiating crowds in the sprawling city centre we plonked down at a signature Parisian cafe' for our first French meal and a glass of rose to unwind. Day one of Paris felt very overwhelming and a little unsatisfying.

It wasn't until the second day when we went on our Hidden Paris Walking Tour of Montmartre that we felt like we had discovered the real, raw, magical Paris that we had been hoping to discover. Montmartre is home to so much history, especially in the arts and writing movements. It's where Picasso lived and worked for a lot of his career. He would meet up with Dali, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in the 1920s. It's where 'bohemia' emanates and where one of my favourite movies of all time is set, Midnight in Paris. We walked around winding cobblestone alleys, saw forgotten windmills and a secret vineyard. Marvelled at the mixture of architectural influences that make up the Sacre-Coeur and the hidden convent that resides next door. Our wonderful tour guide pointed out all of places to eat including a bakery which had won the "Best Baguette" in Paris - which turns out is a pretty big deal as the winner becomes the official supplier of bread to the President and the Elysees Palace for a whole year! Once the tour was over we made sure to eat as much amazing food as possible and shopped like true Parisians at the many amazing boutiques. 

That evening, continuing with the Montmartre theme we had a quick creme brûlée at Le Chat Nior and then took ourselves to see a cabaret show at the La Nouvelle Eve. To top it all off and come back to present day Paris we took and Uber back to our hotel. 

London: Camden & back to the City.

Thankfully the sun was shining for my last day in London. It was also the day my sister Ruby was be arriving to continue our trip after her passport drama back home. And it was also the day London had its first whole tube network strike in 13 years which turned the city on its head. The roads were all jammed and people were packing the streets trying to get to and from where they needed to be. I, still so stoked to be in London despite the chaos, headed out to walk to Camden from my hostel in Soho without a care in the world. I had been leaving the hostel at around 8am every day and each day I was surprised at how quiet the city was at that time. I loved beating all of the tour groups to the streets and getting to see London without the heaving crowds. Being up so early I arrived at Camden Markets before they were ready to open. I wandered down to the canal and walked along soaking up the beauty and charm of place that would seem better suited to being outside of the city. On my way back to check out the markets I walked past a Cereal Killer cafe. This time i decided to go in and see what it was all about, and of course try a AUD$12 bowl of cereal. I ended up choosing a peanut butter jelly combination from the "cereal cocktail" list which involved peanut butter flavoured Capt's Crunch with strawberry flavoured milk and peanut butter "choc chips". It was both a sugar overload and the best cereal I've had in my life. The cherry on top were the TV screens that were playing shows from the late 90s/early 00s like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Saved By The Bell, the kind of shows you used to watch when you were a kid and your mum would be telling you to "turn the TV off and get ready for school!". 

After some more food from the Camden Lock markets and some vintage shopping I headed back to go and meet Ruby at Paddington Station for our romantic reunion. We trekked through the crowds of people and beeping cars back to the hostel to freshen up and then get out to see as much of London as we could in the time we had left. We treated ourselves to a fancy dinner and Aperol spritz's before catching Trafalgar Square and Big Ben before the sun set. We left London early the next morning to go to Paris. When we arrived in Paris, I missed London. I still do. It was awesome.