Fancy Shmancy

Blazer and Sandals - Zara; Jeans - Pimkie; Top - Alice & Olivia; Belt - J Crew; Earrings - Market in Paris; Bracelets - The Bay; Watch - Michael Kors

As promised, here is a more fancy way to style boyfriend jeans as opposed to the casual look I posted earlier this week. You can view that here. Dressing up a pair of ratty ripped jeans is easier than one would think. Just add some strappy sandals, a blazer and a dark lip and you are good to go! 

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is famous for it's wines. Other than that, we really didn't know much about the city. We also found that hotels were crazy expensive, so we decided to rent a room off of Airbnb. It was our first time renting a room (rather than the entire flat), it worked out wonderfully! This was our first trip where I can honestly say that the weather dampened (pun?) our trip. Nonetheless, we had a great time! 

It was raining the morning we arrived, so we asked our temporary roommates what we should do on such a rainy morning.  They told us to go eat some bagels at a place called Catering. When you think of French food, you don't exactly think of bagels (unless you are in Montreal), but we found that Bordeaux is a very hip place, with lots of trendy places to eat.   

The historic part of the city is a UNESCO site. Bordeaux architecture reminds me of a mini Paris.

Emerging from the mist was one of the most frightful sights ever...DJB!

Bordeaux owes it's wine fame to the English. You can Wikipedia why that is.

This giant head helped us pinpoint our location when we would get lost.

We found this amazing place called "Le Maison Du Vin". They had extremely well priced Bordeaux wines (between 2-6 euros) along with expert staff. We visited it everyday during our trip.

No visit to Bordeaux is complete without a trip to a Chateaux for some wine tasting.

We also visited the "Dune de Pilat". It is a massive sand dune. Apparently it's not the best idea to try and climb a sand dune with 40 km/h winds in your face. We had sand in every part of our body for days.

We made it to the top, but because of the wind we could walk across the entire 4km.

Our next trip is to Brittany, followed by Belgium, followed by the Basque Country, followed by our wedding. The next two months are going to fly by!

All I Need In This Life Of Sin...

Jeans - Pimkie; Blouse - Dynamite; Shoes - Andre; Belt - Club Monaco; Earrings - The Bay; Watch - Bulova

Is me and my boyfriend jeans! And I did a lot of sinning in these while we were in Bordeaux. Well, not so much sinning but drinking copious amounts of wine. I pretty much lived in these all week as they were so comfortable and could be worn casually, with sneakers and blouse, or dressed up for the evening with sexy heels (check back later this week for that post). 

A little while back, before I purchased these, I was all for making myself some genuine boyfriend jeans using a pair of DJBs old ones. When that didn't end up working so well as most of his jeans had a bit of a flare to them and weren't as baggy as I wanted, I was on to the next best option -  buying a pair of ragged, ripped, slightly stone washed (remember those??) jeans that my mother would be appalled that I spent money on. After trying on a few options at H&M and Zara (which were overpriced, ranging from 39-49 euros), without much luck I finally found this perfect pair at Pimkie for a lot less than that!  

I also started to think about what a guys opinion of  these jeans are on a girl. DJB insisted he liked them (of course he does, he's supposed to say that) but what about my other male readers? Yay or nay? 

London

It seems like months ago that we were in London, but it was only a week and a bit ago. It takes 3 hours to get from our apartment in Paris to the centre of London (thanks to the Eurostar). Not too shabby! Even though they are only a few hours apart, Paris and London are completely different. London has successfully embraced mixing modern architecture with old, while Paris has successfully embraced keeping things (from the outside) looking like they did 100 years ago (except for one big oops).

We stayed at B&B's for our entire trip. Needless to say, I had my share of English breakfasts.

We went on some free walking tours. This is a great (and affordable) way to see the city and also learn things about London. Like how this cat made oysters a trendy food. This is Samuel Johnson' cat, and SJ famously said  "Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

You'll notice London has it's fair share of statues.

If you think this is London Bridge, you are terribly wrong! This is tower bridge.

This, is the world famous London Bridge my fair lady. As you can see it's not much, plus it was built in the 70's so that explains why it looks so..blah.

We also found a great free view from the terrace of a new shopping centre.

One of the tours was the "Jack the Ripper" tour. The best part about this was seeing the East Side. When we go back to London we will spend more time here.

Ale's are a big deal in the UK. We had our share of real cask ale. This is non pasteurized beer without secondary carbonation. It's served at room temperature. After your first sip, you'll say "wow this is warm flat beer" but apparently this is how real beer is supposed to be served. 

You can't go to London without seeing some sort of guards changing.

As we were standing in front of Buckingham palace, the front gates opened. Our tour guide said "I've never seen those gates open." Then, a few motor bikes drove out.
Then this person drove out....the Queen!
After the queen sighting, any "changing of the guards" was a little less exciting.

Trafalgar square.

Bali memorial.
Can you see Big Ben? No you can't! Because Big Ben is the bell within the clock.

Our short stay in London was too short. We will be back!