Barcelona!

This Valentine's Day, I decided to be spontaneous and randomly book a trip to Barcelona for me and Dima. I don't think I have ever fallen in love with a city so much - I am so determined to go back there later in the year to stay for a while and work! It has the best bits of London and Cyprus, good food, sunshine, beaches and the city.

First up was La Sagrada Familia - the most insanely incredible place I have ever visited. The architecture just makes your jaw drop and leaves you staring up into the ceiling at every tiny detail. Dima loved it too.

 

This is quite literally the city of Gaudi and well deserved, his work is breathtaking!

We went up the Nativity Tower to see the views of Barcelona, which is absolutely massive!

We booked our tickets online (about 20 euros) and this saved us a long queue. The queue was at least an hour long on a random Friday in February, so I would dread to imagine it in high season. Definitely book ahead, and definitely go inside - it is way too stunning not to!

Next up was the market, which I'd heard a lot about. It didn't disappoint - it was huge and had every kind of food imaginable. The food in Barcelona was surprisingly awesome - I knew it was good but didn't expect every single thing we ate to be of such incredible quality. 

There was so much fresh sea food on offer - most of it still crawling about! 

But most featured, were the hundreds of fresh fruit cups and smoothies dotted around being sold for 1 euro. We didn't expect much for this price but the quality was AMAZING! 

We also grabbed some out-of-this-world oysters from one of the tapas bars inside the market, which all are serving up the fresh food around them. Most of the food places around the main tourist attractions are to be avoided, but these ones are great. 

I love this picture, the woman in the wheelchair was peeling peas for her daughter in the sunshine and looked really happy. 

Speaking of sunshine, I had missed the beach terribly from my past living in Cyprus and was so excited to go discover La Barceloneta beach! The sun was out and our jackets were off, and the beach was beautifully empty. 

Rejuvenating me to come back to this beach-less city!

I can only imagine how good it is in Summer, the water was so clear!

We ate a squid ink paella lunch overlooking the beautiful sea.

And what is a seaside trip without ice cream?!

 

Vioko did some pretty amazing gelato, and hot chocolate!

After a siesta, we went to Cientoocho restaurant for some of the best food I have ever had the pleasure of eating. With gigantic starters (as above), Dima obviously ordered three and we were stuffed by the main course. 

I am a massive fan of artichokes, and these were definitely the best I have ever ever ever had. Out came four  for a starter, each one bathed in olive oil and big chunks of pepper. Probably the best thing I ate in Barcelona. 

A steak of octopus starter! 

Dima went for a meaty main ,I went for fish. Both were excellent, despite how full we were!

Dima managed to fit a final dessert down, whilst I settled for a 'fruit mosaic'. 

A beautiful meal, they are definitely worth checking out! 

Quite a lot for our first day, more next time! 

xxx

Foodie Celebrations in Shoreditch

I have some news: I got a job! The most perfect job for me right now, basically doing what I love (reading/writing/law), using my law degree, working from home & it will still let me do modeling! To celebrate, I collected a group of my favourite people and we ate. A lot. 

First stop was Hotbox, in Shoreditch which was insanely busy and cramped. The food was good, service not so much (they forgot my pancakes, which damaged my soul a little) and we had to wait for 45 minutes to eat. This is probably typical of any Shoreditch-hot-brunch place on the weekend though, although they only do brunch on Sundays. So maybe wait until they filter out to the rest of the weekdays - the effort isn't worth your mental breakdown as you see beautiful food delivered to those who came after you!

Chicken Waffle at Hotbox

To get over the disappointment of brunch, we walked on over to Dum Dum Doughnuts (Boxpark, Shoreditch) which never disappoint with their beautiful cronuts. I got one of the last ferrero rocher doughnuts, which was insane. 

To get over this minor cholesterol rush, we went for a stroll down Brick Lane. It is ridiculously busy on a Sunday, buzzing with people taking selfies, eating street food and checking out the local art offerings on the walls. 

Me & Lisa - check out her blog!

On a Sunday, you can find every kind of food you can think of on this street. 

But after much debate, we decided to go and check out Liverpool St Patty & Bun. The one in Soho is invariably packed out (with at least an hour queue of ravenous people outside!) but this recently opened branch seems to have escaped most of the buzz. Very surprisingly, we got in straight away and got a seat within minutes!

I might have mentioned Patty and Bun before. It is...

mind-boggingly awesome. 

The best celebration ever, we were all left in serious food comas for the rest of the day week.

Date Day

I love day dates, especially in London. There's literally so much you can do - just get the tube to a random area and stroll around, discovering hidden shops, cute cafes and swanky restaurants. Last weekend the sun made a rare-ish January appearance so we wrapped up in lots of layers and headed out! 

I took Dima to Primrose Hill, this beautiful village-like area I had a shoot in a couple of weeks ago. This is yummy-mummy and posh dog territory - on every road there were at least 5 dogs happily bouncing along in the sunshine. We found the Ripe Kitchen, a cafe that generously let me change in their bathroom on the shoot day - they had 4 bowls of free cake samples so obviously I went back for more! 

Exceptional coffee and a vegan, gluten free cheesecake! 

Fuelled by coffee, we started our ascent up the hill..

Which was a lot tougher to walk up than it looks! 

But the views are worth it. And running down the hill of course! 

We just kept going straight, all the way through Regent's Park until we got to a tube station (which happened to be very very far away - we were walking for hours!)

I tried to take my polaroid camera out for a day trip, but it doesn't get on too well with the sunshine!

All that walking made us both extremely hungry - lucky that we found ourselves in Soho, surrounded by hundreds of restaurants. However generally eating out in London on the weekend looks a little something like this - 

A queue for the breakfast club at 2pm on a Saturday! It's good, but not that good! 

So it's a matter of searching out the just-opened-but-not-yet-on-timeout-london restaurants, the ones that stay secret for a couple of weeks before they either become fully booked for the next month or have a queue shivering in the cold outside all day, everyday. (Patty & Bun I'm looking at you and your amazing food hidden behind a constant hour long queue!)

First of all we tried out Bunnychow - a place I'd heard about quite a bit and thought they were based in Shoreditch's Box Park. They just opened a permanent restaurant in Soho! Bunnychow basically empty out reasonably sized loafs of bread and fill the innards with different delicious fillings - we went for meatballs. Other menu stand outs were the pulled pork, and the full english breakfast in a loaf. 

Highly recommended - their food was filling (more than enough to share one between two), reasonably priced (roughly £7 per loaf) and most importantly, perfect food for when it is freezing outside. The juices (above) were also some of the best I've had - particularly the plum and mint. Get the juice!

We purposefully shared one Bunnychow so we could find something else to try too - next up was Shoryu Ramen which was some of the best I've tried in London. 

The restaurant is teeny, hidden away in China Town and buzzing with the atmosphere of hot sizzling gyozas and steaming ramens being hurried around to hungry people. 

 

Try and get all of the above - from the fluffy bun stuffed with incredible pork, cooked to perfection gyozas and a filling ramen - it's a perfect meal.

Dima agrees! 

We finished off our mega-date at Pace Gallery, checking out some amazing photography before going home to play Crash Bandicoot all day - cultural!