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Catch up here, Days - 1, 2.
Monday, 3 June 2013
30 Day Snap #3 - The Hills Are Alive
Catch up here, Days - 1, 2.
Kirstie's Travel Diaries #3 - Lost In New York
Catch up with #2 here.
DAY 4 (03/03/12)
This was a Saturday, after falling asleep in seconds the night before from being so exhausted, we woke up at around 8am feeling funky, fresh and ready for another exciting day in New York. After both getting ready it was around 10:30am and we decided to set off to somewhere we both had high on our list of places to see, central park. We made sure we wrapped up extra warm as we had been so so cold the day before and started towards Times Square as we knew eventually if we followed that road we would end up at the park.
Once we arrived at Times Square we thought it was the perfect opportunity to get a quick bite to eat to fill us up for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon (you will get to learn quickly that our eating habits on this trip weren't great) and even though it was early we headed for that golden M, hello chicken nuggets.
Chicken, fries and 20 sachets of mayo later we headed in the direction of the park. Even walking through the streets of New York is exciting you are always noticing something different and the feel and pace of everything is always so quick and vibrant.
When we approached the park it was obvious that we were tourists so... queue the tour guides. Every 2 seconds we were approached by someone who wanted to sell us a "fantastic, unique CHEAP" tour of the park in one of those little bike/carriage things... I forget what they are called!
We actually decided against this and set off on foot alone into Central Park. Now... Central Park is BIG and I mean huge. It is 840.01 acres and it feels ten times bigger than that!
After walking for about 45mintues we had seen so many places we recognised from TV/Films and it was all so fancinsating and beautiful BUT we had come to one resounding conclusion, we were lost. Seriously lost.
There are lots of people in Central Park BUT nine times out of ten they are either running or tourists aswell and as we couldn't bring ourselves to ask someone who was running (way too awkward) we carried on walking hoping to find someone who looked helpful.
We had decided that we wanted to go to the zoo and we'd seen a few maps around the park but we didn't seem to be getting any closer to it! Eventually we found a police officer who kindly gave us our own personal map and told us that actually we had already gone past the zoo (of course). So we decided that the best thing to do was to head back to the main road and walk down the side of Central Park on the street until we found the zoo and thank god - it worked.
A short walk later and we were there, Central Park Zoo. We went straight in, got our tickets and had our cameras at the ready.
First place we went to was the seal enclousre, which is actually a really pleaseant open area! We stayed here for so long becuase they were just so entertaining, jumping out of the water, coming right up and out of the sides, climbing around - they were definitely putting on a show. We had a favourite who had one eye, he/she was hilarious and we took so many photos!
We then headed over to the polar bear and wow. Such a beautiful animal and even though she (I think it was a she) was just sleeping and relaxing you could watch her for hours! There were a few view points and there is one down a flight of stairs which gets you level with the water that is in the enclousure which gave us an amazing view (hence the photos). If you were ever to go there when they are in the water I bet it is incredible.
Now central park zoo isn't like it looks in the movie Madagascar and it isn't actually that large, so after checking out the rest of the pens and enclosures (I loved the penguins) we thought it was a good time to head out back into the city and check out some of the shops we had wanted to see. If the Zoo is on your list of things to do I would still definitely go just don't base a large portion of your day around it.
Not far from Central Park we found fifth avenue and along with that FAO schwarz. This huge toy store is known for it's 'big piano' and with it being up there with my 'things to see in New York' we headed on in. Well I am a huge big kid anyway so this store was just a playground - so much fun and some truly awesome things such as wizard of oz and harry potter barbies and huge lego statues. When we got to the big piano it was of course full of children and I didn't really fancy queuing up with them all and looking like a crazy woman so I just got a few photos.
After this we headed outside and spotted the amazing building which is the Apple store. If you haven't seen it before it is a huge clear cube on the street and the store is actually underground. You go into the cube and either take the stairs or a lift to the store below. Now obviously we weren't going to be buying anything from apple (we were on a budget here people and where am I going to pack a mac?) but we had a quick look around anyway - we couldn't not.
Now it was time for a bit of girly time and after popping into the Ugg store (my feet we freezing in Converse and I was seriously considering buying some) we walked over to the world famous Bloomingdales.
Our mission for this store was to find the iconic 'brown bag' and after going to probably every floor we found them. I got the 'little brown cosmetic bag' and my friend got the 'little brown bag'. Bloomingdales is fab to look around BUT I'm really not a fan of people trying to sell me things, I know they are on commission but people that come up and start smearing things all over your hands and basically saying you have to buy the product - no. just no.
A few little stores later and we decided that we wanted to head back to Times Square and check out a few of the stores we had seen there. We knew we were quite a walk away and were starting to get a little tired so we hailed a taxi and were there in minutes. We went to Sephora and Mac and both had a little shopping spree.
The main thing I wanted to get at the time was Taylor Swift's perfume Wonderstruck as it wasn't available in the UK yet. So I headed straight for perfume section in Sephora and found it and then we both got the Viva Glam Nicki lipstick from Mac which at the time was brand new so we found that very exciting.
We walked back to out hotel,which like I said before is about a 15/20minute walk straight down from Times Square, grabbed a slice of pizza for dinner and went and had an early night because we knew that Sunday morning was going to be an early one.
We were off on a day trip to Washington DC!!
NEXT POST - We head to Washington DC to see The White House, Ab Lincoln Memorial, Madame Tussauds, The Smithsonian museum and so much more....
DAY 4 (03/03/12)
This was a Saturday, after falling asleep in seconds the night before from being so exhausted, we woke up at around 8am feeling funky, fresh and ready for another exciting day in New York. After both getting ready it was around 10:30am and we decided to set off to somewhere we both had high on our list of places to see, central park. We made sure we wrapped up extra warm as we had been so so cold the day before and started towards Times Square as we knew eventually if we followed that road we would end up at the park.
Once we arrived at Times Square we thought it was the perfect opportunity to get a quick bite to eat to fill us up for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon (you will get to learn quickly that our eating habits on this trip weren't great) and even though it was early we headed for that golden M, hello chicken nuggets.
Chicken, fries and 20 sachets of mayo later we headed in the direction of the park. Even walking through the streets of New York is exciting you are always noticing something different and the feel and pace of everything is always so quick and vibrant.
When we approached the park it was obvious that we were tourists so... queue the tour guides. Every 2 seconds we were approached by someone who wanted to sell us a "fantastic, unique CHEAP" tour of the park in one of those little bike/carriage things... I forget what they are called!
After walking for about 45mintues we had seen so many places we recognised from TV/Films and it was all so fancinsating and beautiful BUT we had come to one resounding conclusion, we were lost. Seriously lost.
There are lots of people in Central Park BUT nine times out of ten they are either running or tourists aswell and as we couldn't bring ourselves to ask someone who was running (way too awkward) we carried on walking hoping to find someone who looked helpful.
We had decided that we wanted to go to the zoo and we'd seen a few maps around the park but we didn't seem to be getting any closer to it! Eventually we found a police officer who kindly gave us our own personal map and told us that actually we had already gone past the zoo (of course). So we decided that the best thing to do was to head back to the main road and walk down the side of Central Park on the street until we found the zoo and thank god - it worked.
First place we went to was the seal enclousre, which is actually a really pleaseant open area! We stayed here for so long becuase they were just so entertaining, jumping out of the water, coming right up and out of the sides, climbing around - they were definitely putting on a show. We had a favourite who had one eye, he/she was hilarious and we took so many photos!
After this we headed outside and spotted the amazing building which is the Apple store. If you haven't seen it before it is a huge clear cube on the street and the store is actually underground. You go into the cube and either take the stairs or a lift to the store below. Now obviously we weren't going to be buying anything from apple (we were on a budget here people and where am I going to pack a mac?) but we had a quick look around anyway - we couldn't not.
Our mission for this store was to find the iconic 'brown bag' and after going to probably every floor we found them. I got the 'little brown cosmetic bag' and my friend got the 'little brown bag'. Bloomingdales is fab to look around BUT I'm really not a fan of people trying to sell me things, I know they are on commission but people that come up and start smearing things all over your hands and basically saying you have to buy the product - no. just no.
A few little stores later and we decided that we wanted to head back to Times Square and check out a few of the stores we had seen there. We knew we were quite a walk away and were starting to get a little tired so we hailed a taxi and were there in minutes. We went to Sephora and Mac and both had a little shopping spree.
The main thing I wanted to get at the time was Taylor Swift's perfume Wonderstruck as it wasn't available in the UK yet. So I headed straight for perfume section in Sephora and found it and then we both got the Viva Glam Nicki lipstick from Mac which at the time was brand new so we found that very exciting.
We were off on a day trip to Washington DC!!
NEXT POST - We head to Washington DC to see The White House, Ab Lincoln Memorial, Madame Tussauds, The Smithsonian museum and so much more....
Sunday, 2 June 2013
30 Day Snap #2 - Home Is Where My Heart Is
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So it is Day 2 of the 30 Day Snap and here it is, a sneak peek into my life - my favourite picture in my bedroom.
Today I spent my day at home, so I thought it would make sense to give you a snap from that very place! It is a Sunday so I made sure I got loads of things done which I had on my to-do list. It was a lovely day and I did miss out on a bit of sunshine BUT I am so happy to have a clean and tidy room.
Washing, dusting, cleaning, hoovering, hair treatment and a blog post later I have whizzed through most of my long, long list and am now ready to sit down, join in the #bbloggers chat on twitter, paint my nails and wait for The Only Way Is Marbs (I know you are all thinking that too!)
Catch up here, Days - 1.
My Make-up Storage
What was the point in me holding onto a lipgloss (or 10) that I've had for 7 years and never use? Or foundations I hate but kept anyway? Or mascaras that are definitely out of date? There wasn't one!
I still buy more make-up at least a couple of times a month and it's not like I'm short of anything but it is so nice to have condensed it down and finally have it in a tidy and organised fashion!
I said on twitter than once I hit 100 GFC followers on here (thank you to everyone single person who has taken the time to follow) I would do this post so here it is - a guided tour around my make-up storage/ my dresser!
I'm not going to bore you with what is in every drawer but if anyone would like that then please let me know in the comments below or via twitter @KirstieLouiseS (p.s.All the acrylic drawers are from Muji.)
B - Photo frame which I actually won in a raffle and I love it to pieces and a studded hairband from Primark. (Photo in the photo frame is one I took in LA of the Beverly Hills sign.)
C - Cotton wool pad jar is actually a sweet jar from Laura Ashley which I got in the sales at Christmas & my Urban Decay Naked palette which is by far one of the best make-up purchases ever, I swear by it.
D - My powders & foundations which include Mac Studio Sculpt Foundation & Rimmel Wake Me up Foundation.
I use L'Oreal True Match daily but if I am going on a night out then I always use my Mac Studio Sculpt as the coverage is amazing but I don't like to use it for boring things like going to town/popping out as I think it's a waste of an expensive product and would rather save it!
F - This drawer is full of bronzers, blushes and highlighters. I don't wear blushes that must but still own a few and I love buying new bronzers all the time. A few of my favourites in this drawer are Mac mineralize skin finish natural in Give Me Sun!, St. Tropez Bronzing Brick and Maxfactor Bronzing powders in 01 Golden & 02 Bronze.
H - These have to be my favourite drawers and ones that I use the most. I have an addiction to buying lipsticks and other lip products and condensing my collection of these was definitely the most tricky!
From top to bottom we have ..... Favourite and most used lipglosses, Red lipsticks and products, nude and light pink shade lipsticks, dark and bright pink shade lipsticks and the bottom drawer is full of extra eye shadows (even though I mainly just use my naked palette), mascaras and eyeliners.
(With having a large collection of lipglosses and lipsticks I actually have an extra tin of them in a separate drawer but thought I wouldn't bore you with a photo!)
I keep all my day-to-day make-up (if you're interested I did a post about it here.) together in my DASH Make-up bag which I got from the store in New York as I like to have it all together rather than picking it out from different drawers every morning.
Saturday, 1 June 2013
30 Day Snap #1 - The Yacht Race
So here it is, numero uno of the 30 day snap! I saw this on Louise, Sprinkle Of Glitter, blog (huge fan of her by the way - one of my favourite youtubers)..... and I thought I would join in on the action as it looks really fun and is a nice diary type way for me to remember what I have been upto this month!
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With it being such a lovely day here in the south and my friend and I having a few hours spare we thought we would get our shades on and go on a bike ride along the seafront where we live!
It was so nice to get out in the sunshine and at the same time burn some calories AND have a good old girly catch-up!
I took this photo when we stopped to turn around, it is of the yacht race which is being held where I live today! (if you are from the UK you can probably guess where that is!)
All these posts are going to be really short and sweet and could go up at anytime of day everyday, so check back tomorrow for the next photo!
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It was so nice to get out in the sunshine and at the same time burn some calories AND have a good old girly catch-up!
I took this photo when we stopped to turn around, it is of the yacht race which is being held where I live today! (if you are from the UK you can probably guess where that is!)
All these posts are going to be really short and sweet and could go up at anytime of day everyday, so check back tomorrow for the next photo!
Kirstie's Travel Diaries #2 - A Sightseers Heaven
Catch up with Day's 1 & 2 here.
DAY 3 (02/03/12)
So this was our first morning waking up in America and it was a bloody early one! With our body clocks being 5 hours ahead we were up and wide awake at around 6am (aka 11am!) so up and ready we got and we wrapped up seriously warm because it was actually so much colder than we were expecting!
Luckily we had both worn big thick hoodies from Jack Wills & Hollister for the flight - little did we know they were going to turn out to be life savers on this trip. We knew the first thing we wanted to do was to head to DASH (The Kardashian's Store in Soho) so once again the iPhone was out we had our map telling us which way to head.
After around 30minutes of walking we found it tucked away a few stores down from Chanel on Spring St.. What we hadn't realised is that stores open a bit later in this part of town and DASH didn't open until 11am so instead of waiting around we took a few photos outside and vowed to go back before we left the city so we could have a look round and get some merchandise!
Next stop was The Statue Of Liberty (yup, today was going to be a sight-seers heaven) so we hailed a taxi, which is always awkward when you first get to NY but I'd like to say we are now experts, and we were on our way.
Before we headed over and got our tickets we decided that we needed some breakfast, we saw a little supermarket type shop and thought we'd try out luck. Well this had everything - including a cafe area upstairs to go and eat your purchases! I settled for a chocolate chip pancake (hey I was in New York) and it was huge!! This is the first time I thought to myself their portions are huge and it wouldn't be the last!
Breakfast eaten, a little bit warmer and with a few snacks bought we headed over the road and towards the ticket office.
The queue for The Statue Of Liberty was pretty big but with all sorts of people waiting from all over the world it was quite a good location for people watching. Although saying this this didn't make me feel any warmer and I was so grateful that I had packed my mittens that morning! After about an hour we were in, getting our bags checked and heading towards the boat.
Living on an island I am very used to ferries and this one just felt like I was at home. Growing closer and closer I was getting more and more excited, my friend had been before but this didn't make her any less excited as I. We hopped off the ferry and followed the crowds for a walk around Liberty! This was a perfect spot for photo taking and you'll get to learn from reading these posts that I do tend/love to get a bit snap happy - but I see nothing wrong with this when making memories! You can see the skyline of the city across the water and of course you are up close and personal with The Statue!
We stayed here for probably around half an hour but the wind was so icy cold that we had a quick look around the gift shop, took photos with stupid hat/masks on and walked back to the ferry. Next stop on the ferry was Ellis Island but we decided to skip this as we had lots planned for this day.
We got off the ferry and were greeted with street performers, these awesome guys doing some amazing dancing and gymnastics and had a massive crowd around them. after watching them for a little while we ventured off and went to ask for directions for Ground Zero.
We thought we would have to get a taxi there but after talking to a lovely traffic warden (I think thats what he was anyway) he kindly pointed out to us that "that is the freedom tower right there". We weren't far from it at all so we were off on foot and heading towards the 9/11 site.
I always knew it was be eerie and even standing in the queue you could just feel that everyone around us felt the same. As we were in New York is was something at the top of our list of things to do and I am so so glad we went. Obviously security, like a lot of the landmarks/tourist attractions, is tight and again we went through the metal detectors and bag searches just like at the Statue of Liberty.
We went to ground zero just before the museum had opened so it was just the water fall fountains there at this point.
They are incredible and the size of them just really does make it hit-home how big these buildings were and how many people's lives this affected.
Ground Zero isn't somewhere you hang around for a long time and after a little while we made our way back out and into the store which is situated by the exit.
Now like I said before, this was a major sight-seeing day so yeah you guessed it next stop for us was The Empire State Building.
We got a taxi from Ground Zero and I can't quite remember how long it took but I can't imagine it was long! We were nervous that we were going to have to queue for ages but that wasn't a queue in sight so up we went.
A fairly expensive ticket and 86 floors in a lift (elevator) later and we were at the top... and getting probably the most wind swept I've ever been in my life. What an AMAZING view. You really get to see the beauty and uniqueness of New York and I could of spent ages up there. But with the cold weather and time ticking on we decided to head back down and make our way back to our hotel.
As easy as that sounds we managed to totally and utterly balls it up. We went to a store and got some food for our room back at the hotel and some well needed bottles of water. As we started making our way back to the hotel location we started to noticed that actually we had no idea where we were going. And... I may, MAY, have made a teeny tiny mistake in thinking our hotel was on 152nd when actually it was on 125th (or something like that) so after walking around 52 blocks more than needed and spending some of our trek in a part of New York I would never want to go back again to we made it back to the hotel. Baring in mind we had been up since around 6, and just carried 24 bottles of water alot further than needed, we were exhausted but our day wasn't over.
When planning this trip we made sure we had tickets for a few things while we were in each state. Tonight we had some of those tickets and they were for Spiderman : Turn Off The Dark the musical on Broadway.
Luckily Broadway was only around a 15 minute or so walk from our hotel and we had seen where the theatre was the night we had arrived and gone to Times Square so we knew where we were going.
Our seats were right at the back of the circle but this didn't matter at all - The musical was amazing. If you are in New York and wondering what show to go and see I would definitely recommended it! Where else are you going to have Spiderman running out of the door right next to you and jumping off of the balcony. So so brilliant, modern and unique with an amazing cast, storyline, soundtrack and set. (I've even got the CD and love singing along).
We left Broadway and it was chucking it down with rain but instead of trying to hail a taxi with the hundreds of other people around we decided just to go for it and walk as fast as we could. And that was our first full day in New York done and dusted.
NEXT POST - Seals, Polar Bears, Central Park & a spot of shopping.....
DAY 3 (02/03/12)
So this was our first morning waking up in America and it was a bloody early one! With our body clocks being 5 hours ahead we were up and wide awake at around 6am (aka 11am!) so up and ready we got and we wrapped up seriously warm because it was actually so much colder than we were expecting!
Luckily we had both worn big thick hoodies from Jack Wills & Hollister for the flight - little did we know they were going to turn out to be life savers on this trip. We knew the first thing we wanted to do was to head to DASH (The Kardashian's Store in Soho) so once again the iPhone was out we had our map telling us which way to head.
After around 30minutes of walking we found it tucked away a few stores down from Chanel on Spring St.. What we hadn't realised is that stores open a bit later in this part of town and DASH didn't open until 11am so instead of waiting around we took a few photos outside and vowed to go back before we left the city so we could have a look round and get some merchandise!
Before we headed over and got our tickets we decided that we needed some breakfast, we saw a little supermarket type shop and thought we'd try out luck. Well this had everything - including a cafe area upstairs to go and eat your purchases! I settled for a chocolate chip pancake (hey I was in New York) and it was huge!! This is the first time I thought to myself their portions are huge and it wouldn't be the last!
Breakfast eaten, a little bit warmer and with a few snacks bought we headed over the road and towards the ticket office.
Living on an island I am very used to ferries and this one just felt like I was at home. Growing closer and closer I was getting more and more excited, my friend had been before but this didn't make her any less excited as I. We hopped off the ferry and followed the crowds for a walk around Liberty! This was a perfect spot for photo taking and you'll get to learn from reading these posts that I do tend/love to get a bit snap happy - but I see nothing wrong with this when making memories! You can see the skyline of the city across the water and of course you are up close and personal with The Statue!
We thought we would have to get a taxi there but after talking to a lovely traffic warden (I think thats what he was anyway) he kindly pointed out to us that "that is the freedom tower right there". We weren't far from it at all so we were off on foot and heading towards the 9/11 site.
I always knew it was be eerie and even standing in the queue you could just feel that everyone around us felt the same. As we were in New York is was something at the top of our list of things to do and I am so so glad we went. Obviously security, like a lot of the landmarks/tourist attractions, is tight and again we went through the metal detectors and bag searches just like at the Statue of Liberty.
We went to ground zero just before the museum had opened so it was just the water fall fountains there at this point.
They are incredible and the size of them just really does make it hit-home how big these buildings were and how many people's lives this affected.
Ground Zero isn't somewhere you hang around for a long time and after a little while we made our way back out and into the store which is situated by the exit.
We got a taxi from Ground Zero and I can't quite remember how long it took but I can't imagine it was long! We were nervous that we were going to have to queue for ages but that wasn't a queue in sight so up we went.
A fairly expensive ticket and 86 floors in a lift (elevator) later and we were at the top... and getting probably the most wind swept I've ever been in my life. What an AMAZING view. You really get to see the beauty and uniqueness of New York and I could of spent ages up there. But with the cold weather and time ticking on we decided to head back down and make our way back to our hotel.
As easy as that sounds we managed to totally and utterly balls it up. We went to a store and got some food for our room back at the hotel and some well needed bottles of water. As we started making our way back to the hotel location we started to noticed that actually we had no idea where we were going. And... I may, MAY, have made a teeny tiny mistake in thinking our hotel was on 152nd when actually it was on 125th (or something like that) so after walking around 52 blocks more than needed and spending some of our trek in a part of New York I would never want to go back again to we made it back to the hotel. Baring in mind we had been up since around 6, and just carried 24 bottles of water alot further than needed, we were exhausted but our day wasn't over.
When planning this trip we made sure we had tickets for a few things while we were in each state. Tonight we had some of those tickets and they were for Spiderman : Turn Off The Dark the musical on Broadway.
Luckily Broadway was only around a 15 minute or so walk from our hotel and we had seen where the theatre was the night we had arrived and gone to Times Square so we knew where we were going.
Our seats were right at the back of the circle but this didn't matter at all - The musical was amazing. If you are in New York and wondering what show to go and see I would definitely recommended it! Where else are you going to have Spiderman running out of the door right next to you and jumping off of the balcony. So so brilliant, modern and unique with an amazing cast, storyline, soundtrack and set. (I've even got the CD and love singing along).
NEXT POST - Seals, Polar Bears, Central Park & a spot of shopping.....
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