So I hope you enjoyed seeing this beautiful city by day, here are a couple of night shots to complete my impressions.I am lucky Mr. Love is very patient and shares my passion for photography! We had a lot of fun walking in the streets of pretty Antwerp with the Camera and the stand. Here is the result:
I will be back soon with the best Bed & Breakfast I ever stayed at.
xxx
Elodie
So, Mr. Love and I came back from our fantastic trip to Antwerp and Amsterdam on Tuesday and had to get back directly to our daily lives and jobs. I was looking forward to this weekend in order to be able to sort out my 800 pictures and prepare my blogposts. I will start with the beginning of our trip and the days we spent in the beautiful city of Antwerp in Belgium.
The most interesting landmark in Antwerp is the train station. I completely fell in love with it - it is just spectacular. The perspectives and the lines are really breathtaking. It is these kinds of spaces that make you regret only having a 50 mm with you and not a wide-angle - but I tried my best!
What I also loved in Antwerp is the very pretty art nouveau district called Zurenborg which is full of beautiful houses - we stayed the first days in this neighborhood in the very cool and affordable hotel Sir Plantin. If you decide to stay there, you should insist on having a quiet room, not facing the main street. Apart from that the hotel is really good and the rooms are really stylish. You sleep under huge reproductions of portraits by Flemish masters.
Zurenborg and the gold and silver buildings:
The amazing architecture, the fashion scene and the many antique shops on the famous Klosterstraat are not the only interesting things in the city. Antwerp is also a famous harbour, and you can admire the big ships just a few steps away from the old town and the cathedral. I love harbours since I have been living in Hamburg and I think it really gives cities a special flair.
The old-town of Antwerp is also definitely worth visiting, with the beautiful cathedral, the guild-houses and the cobblestoned streets.
So this is the first post about Antwerp. I hope you can't wait to visit the city now! Don't worry, I have a lot more to tell you about the city: a couple of images by night, a hot Bed & Breakfast tip, a very cool restaurant and a lovely Belgian interior design showroom. So....stay tuned and talk to you soon!
Elodie
So, I think I talked or showed enough of my handmade stuff in the last posts. So let's talk about Hamburg. The first shop I would like to talk about is the beautiful Japanese shop called Akiko - "Ein Stück Japan" in the Hamburg Neustadt. Hamburg has so many design and decoration treasures to offer and so the Neustadt - it is not going to be the last post about this part of the city. Akiko opened her shop in the Wexstraße 39 about eight years ago.
She sells fabric with traditional japanese pattern
as well as decoration items such as boxes, or tableware
She also offers some handcrafted accessories and clothes produced with japanese fabric in her workshop.
Akiko has arranged her shop in a very tasteful and poetic way - with origami cranes dancing on branches but still respecting the traditional japanese sense of simplicity and harmony.
If you are a crafter and want to learn the art of origami (the traditional Japanese art of paper folding) you can join a workshop. The workshops take place in the shop, and Akiko teaches herself.
Of course the fabric and the papers can be bought online, but it would be such a shame to miss a visit to this fabulous shop.
AKIKO Ein Stück Japan Wexstraße 39 20355 Hamburg
Monday : closed Tu. – Fr. : 11:00 – 19:00 Sat. : 11:00 – 15:00
