Gatsby.

"And I hope she'll be a fool. That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. "

And fools we were.

While everyone in America was celebrating their 3 day weekend for Memorial Day, we here in England also had a 3 day weekend to celebrate.. ? Well, I'm not really sure, it seems as if the English just really like their 3 day "bank holidays" and I'm not complaining!

Thanks to my friend Teagan who attended university in London I heard about these monthly day-parties called Bacanal. They pop up in different places around the city and always have a different location or theme. When I looked into where the next one would be I discovered that the upcoming one was- you guessed it- Great Gatsby themed! Obviously I HAD to be in attendance. The 1920's have always been my favorite era. Something about the lace, feathers, pearls, and all around defiance of the traditional fashion rules really gets me going! Even when I'm in New York I make it a point to find speak easies that are still operational (bath tub gin in Chelsea being my all time fave).

So after a couple of emails with the event coordinator I got a couple of tickets & started to plan my outfit.

Charlotte and I goofed off in the most amazing vintage store called Clobber for literally HOURS. Trying to find dresses, trying on furs, pearls, fascinators. We looked ridiculous and the shop keeper probably got a good laugh at us no doubt.

In the end I purchased a 20's style dress from Zara, got some cheap fake pearls from primark, and found the most amazing vintage head piece from a shop called What Alice Found in the vintage quarter of Bournemouth. I was ready.

Charlotte ended up not being able to attend but our friend Anna ended up joining me for what would turn out to be one of the most fun days, ever.

Normally I am always running late for events I'm attending but by some stroke of luck everything that Sunday went according to plan. Anna and I arrived in London around 1 pm and checked into our hotel at 37 Collingham Place -which for £70 for the night was AWESOME! A welcome change from the hostels I've come accustomed to staying in. It wasn't a 5 star resort or anything, but two double beds, a private bathroom and shower, a kitchenette with a fridge for only £70 in Earl's Court? No complaints here! I've paid more for shittier rooms in central London. Believe me. We then ran to the simply food up the street to grab salads for lunch and some rose champagne to get the party started!

We turned the music up loud, sipped champagne, got our pearls and our red lipstick on and were ready to leave by 3:30. Right on time. I should get a medal or something.

We grabbed a black taxi (which still look like they've popped out of a cartoon to me) and arrived at il botaccio ready to party.

I can't even describe how amazing it felt when we walked in, all I can say is that the Bacanal staff are clearly very good at their jobs because I literally felt as if I was transported in time into the Great Gatsby. The venue was perfect for such an affair and if there is one thing I LOVE about everyone in England it's that people are always keen to dress up. In Scottsdale if I tried to throw a gatsby themed party everyone would half-ass it, but here all the men were in proper tuxes or suspenders and all the women looked fantastic in their 1920's dresses, feathers, sequins and pearls. Heaven.

The next couple hours involved mingling, confetti, glitter, champagne, and all around fun! I met some incredible people many of whom were actually American.

Once Anna and I could tell that the party was coming to an end we hopped in a taxi and went back to the hotel to change and decide what we were going to do with the rest of our night! After more ridiculous dancing around our room and jumping on the bed like I was a giddy little girl, we decided to join some of the people we met at bacanal at a rooftop party in Kensington.

One thing I love about big cities is the amazing rooftops, you can see the whole city and have a place to spend time with your friends, even throw parties without having to spend thousands of pounds in the clubs.

We chatted it up all night with all sorts of people (mainly really well dressed men) and just enjoyed the night. I even got to talking with someone who had spent their summers at the same beach club in west Hampton that my family goes to (which I visited almost every summer of my childhood).

What an epic night.

The next day Anna and I set off to Muriel's kitchen for the most delicious breakfast where she finally got me to try brown sauce- still not sure what it is but I LOVE it. Then we set off towards Harrods because for some reason unbeknownst to me, I had still never been there. Once again, I was in heaven.

The food.
The fashion.
The furniture.
The perfumeries.

I have been to heaven, it is in London, and it goes by the name of Harrods.

Part of me wanted to throw all caution to the wind and try on every mui mui fur coat and dolce and gabbana dress in the building.

But I didn't.

I did however buy a gift for my friend Paige back home and pick up some design magazines to cut up to make mood boards in class.

Alas, it was time for the weekend to end and head back down to Bournemouth.

I spent the rest of bank holiday enjoying a lovely barbecue with the family I work for and relaxing with some wine.

Another amazing weekend in Europe, I'm sure going to miss this place!!

iAmsterdam

Where do I even begin? Let me start by saying that this blog is not for the faint of heart, children, the elderly, or my parents. So if you fit into one of those categories please stop reading and return to your knitting.

Now where was I? Oh yes, this weekend my friend Charlotte and I traveled to the one & only Amsterdam. We got an amazing deal on a flight out of London southend airport (which we would late find out is NOT in London), so ridiculously early on Saturday morning we made our way out of Bournemouth in Charlotte's Mini Cooper and prepared ourselves for what laid ahead. Thanks to my glorious map reading skills paired with the iPhones inability to find southend airport, we found ourselves in the middle of central London at 4:30 am at none other than canary wharf. At this point we were informed by a security officer that we were about an HOUR away from our destination and had clearly taken a wrong turn somewhere. This was a problem. We were under the impression that our flight was at 6 am , it was now 4:45 am and we were an hour away. Perfect. As usual, anything that can go wrong, will.

Luckily for us, after calling the airport we discovered that our flight was not departing until 7:30 am, buying us enough time to get there with plenty of time to park and get through security. Phew!

Once we arrived in Amsterdam we were exhausted, but upon arriving at the hostel we couldn't be bothered to sleep, there was so much that needed to be done!!

First stop: buy some pot. So we wandered aimlessly until we smelled a "coffee shop" out. Literally. I bought a pre-rolled joint from a super hipster looking Dutch man and proceeded to sit on a picnic table out front of the shop and light up. Amazing.

Now that I was sufficiently high, clearly it was time to eat some dirty Dutch street food, then go get a tattoo.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram have probably already seen it, but for those of you who haven't, I got a small semi colon behind my right ear. The semi colon tattoo to me is a metaphor for life, travel, relationships, etc. When writing, the author can either choose to end the sentence with a period (or a full-stop for you British and Australians) OR they can instead use a semi colon and continue on.
Next we obviously explored the shopping district which was quite a pleasant surprise, there were loads of Dutch stores I had never heard of that had amazing clothes, desigual was by far my favorite.

Then it was time for a siesta, yes, I know, boring. But to be fair we were nackered and wanted to be ready for the events of the upcoming EPIC night out.

I'm not quite sure if any of us were totally prepared for what was about to happen next. I repeat-- mom and dad if you're reading this, I'd advise you to stop now.

Now we were ready for the red light district. We got all dressed up and put on some bright pink mermaid wigs and hit the town with our new friends from our hostel dorm with one thing on the agenda: a live sex show. We skulked through hidden alley ways and explored all the red lit windows filled with girls in their knickers inviting everyone to join them in their room. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. Surly, eerie, and totally sexy in the most wrong sort of way. It's an image that no matter how prepared you are, is just totally unforgettable & even after seeing it 3 or 4 times throughout the weekend I'm not quite sure ill ever get used to seeing mostly naked women in red windows... Or worse mostly naked transsexuals with red and blue lit windows (no offense to the transsexual community it's just a rather shocking thing to see in a window).

We chose to go to the moulin rouge live sex theatre for a few reasons but mainly because it is a more popular show and it seemed less likely that we would get human trafficked there. So we paid €35 for two red bull vodkas and a sex show.

Again, mom- stop reading this.

The show started off innocent enough, with a stripper who pulled a woman who was on her hen-do (bachelorette party) up on stage for a rather dirty lap dance in which she got fully undressed and put a sharpie in her naughty bits and wrote "I'm a dirty girl" on the bride-to-be's stomach. Next up was a Spanish-looking woman doing the salsa.. Seemed innocent enough, until she pulled me and a guy from our hostel up on stage... And yes, reluctantly I went on stage. After salsa dancing and acting a fool the women then got naked and started to unpeel a banana.. Which she then put inside herself (the part that still had the peel on). Having an idea of what was about to happen I looked to my right and told my new friend from the hostel to take a REALLY small bite, so what does he do?... He takes the biggest bite of this damn banana making it so I would be WAY too close in contact with this woman's vagina if I had to take a bite too. LUCKILY she just took a small slice and put it on the top of her breast.. Which I then ate. I know what you're thinking, I'm shocked and appalled at myself too. At least I wasn't the last person to bit the banana because the woman ended up wrapping her legs around his face.

Round 3 of the sex show: enter a monk and a nun. Who immediately just start doing the deed right on stage. The guy looks about 19 and his penis was Abnormally large, the woman was blonde, about 40 and her vagina was also.. Well, abnormally large. Throughout the show Charlotte and I kept looking at each other saying "that should be hurting her!". I honestly wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry the whole thing was so awkward and choreographed with absolutely zero passion involved. I'm 90% sure the guy was gay and that they were having a conversation about their day at certain points. This is one of those things you'll have to see to believe because it's probably the oddest thing I've ever witnessed in my life & it's not like i've never walked in on someone having sex.

After losing all my morals by basically my hooking up with a prostitute we lost the pink wigs and headed for the clubs @ danced the night away to techno in a very boozy stupor. After deciding we wanted to hear music with words we left and somehow found ourselves chicken fighting in the Amsterdam square (details are a bit fuzzy) and I saw a sign that said. 10 shots for €10! Obviously, we were all in. 10 shots if jäger down the hatch, and then I pulled out the remainder of my joint. Which I shared with probably everyone in the bar.

The next day was quite a struggle. After waking up at 1:30 PM Charlotte and I got our asses out of bed and into a restaurant for some Dutch pancakes, chips, lasagne, and my personal favorite a steamer (steamed milk with hazelnut syrup). This was our feeble attempt to end our hangover so that we could go to Anne Frank Huis- the secret annex in which the frank family his from the nazis for 2 years.

The line at the Anne frank house was massive but we decided to wait it out anyway. You see my step-grandfather Nathan Harris (originally Natan Herschlekovitz-- spell check?) was a holocaust survivor and had been rescued by the Canadian troops from Bergen Belsen - the concentration camp where Anne & Margot Frank died just a month before the rescue. My grandpa Nate passed when I was about 6 or 7 and while I remember him fondly & I certainly remember the numbers tattooed on his wrist, I never really got to speak with him myself about the horrors he encountered. My mother did tape record quite a few interviews with him (as I believe at one point she wanted to write a book about him) but he passed before the story was complete and the tapes are difficult to understand since grandpa Nate's polish accent was incredibly thick. I digress, but needless to say the museum was something that I needed to see.

The annex was much larger and much nicer than I'd imagined when I read the diary of Anne Frank, that said, I can't imagine living there for 2 years with 8 people and not even being able to open a window. The tour of the annex was heart wrenching and was a true testament to how much Otto Frank truly loved his family. Otto was the only surviving member of the Frank family & all I could think was how difficult it must have been for him to open the annex he lived in with his wife, children, and friends to the public as a museum. To create miniature models of what the annex looked like furnished, to publish his youngest daughters diary because she had written that all she ever wanted was to be a famous writer. All I could think about was what a lovely, strong man he must have been and what a horrible fate his family suffered due to the disgusting intolerance that one can sometimes find in this world we live in.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the profits from the Anne frank house not only go to the preservation of the building but to other anti-hate groups. Even ones that support gay marriage (which is legal in holland).

Upon leaving I felt like I learned so much but I think it goes without saying that it put us in a slightly somber mood. So we stopped into a local pancake shop to discuss what we had learned and cheer ourselves up with some more pancakes. Banana and bacon pancakes to be exact (weird).

Later that evening we were still sufficiently hungover from our hijinks the previous night so we opted to do a relaxed canal cruise to see the city from the canals rather than the streets. In fact, Amsterdam was actually built to be traveled through by boat so it seemed the perfect way to spend the evening. Our newest hostel roommate Dave from Australia also decided to join us. We saw Amsterdam from a totally different view this way, how truly beautiful and clean it is. You see most people that live in Amsterdam do not drive, There are no underground trains that smell of urine. Everyone rides bikes with cute baskets (sometimes filled with flowers--not kidding) and they do it with a style and grace that is unparalleled, and just about everyone wears hipster glasses. If I would have to nominate a city to be the most hipster city in the world, it would be amsterdam. Between the need glasses, the thousands of flowery fixie bikes, the lack of dress codes for night clubs, the bartenders with messy high buns, people living on incredible house boats on a canal, the stench of pot on every corner, along with all the organic health stores and markets, they definitely take the cake as a hipster paradise.

After the tour we showed Dave around the red light district and finally found the condomerie!! Which is the weirdest store ever that actually sells condoms with shark heads and such... I would have bought some had it not been closed. Then we headed back near the hostel and found a bar that was filled with hookahs flowers and random white cats and decided to grab a couple of beers before heading in for the night.

As I was going to bed I ended up meeting a couple of girls who lived in phoenix arizona as well, and it turned out that we had tons of friends in common! The perfect end to the trip if you ask me. It was nice to hear an american accent and discuss the differences between Europe and home! Hope you're having a blast Kellie and Caitlin! We will have to get drinks when I get back! Xx !!

The trip was now coming to an end, Charlotte and I had to be up ridiculously early to catch the train to the airport where we quickly grabbed a bite at McDonald's where I opted to try some experimental Dutch thing called the "McKroken" which was a surprisingly delicious fried beef and mashed potato cake thing with Dijon mustard. As soon as I post this I will be googling where to get a McKroken in America.

As we boarded our flight it was all over, the sex, pot, fuzzy booze filled raving, random metal urinals in the street so people dont piss in corners, and almost getting hit by bikes at every corner.

What a weekend. I just might rent a houseboat and make Amsterdam my new home. If only it wasn't so damn cold.

Add caption

Add caption