Travel Diaries: Moscow

Getting to Moscow was a true journey.

I was in Berlin for a week and took a flight with my friend Cata to Moscow.

Cata and I had both passports EU and Chilean and that raised tons of doubts with the people from customs. They where the meanest and we where truly nervous. In the plane a baby cried all the way to Moscow and once we got to customs, an agent yelled at me in Russian and took my passport to the back to check stuff -weird- I was about to faint when she came back with the scariest face and said: something in Russian... and OK at the end. It was about 3 a.m. by now.

This is Cata

GOSHHH, picked our bags and waited for our friend Juan Pablo who was traveling from Italy to meet us.

The ticket office for the train to Moscow was closed and we had to wait in line for them to open under a cascade of freezing A/C. At 6am we could buy the ticket and get on the train and while Cata and Juan Pablo catch up I slept my way and my mood.

MOCKBA

Three days in Ubud

Last month was a roller coaster ride and that's why I went AWOL from the blogosphere.

December hit the calendar and everything went crazy. Packing my bags and leaving them with a friend for three weeks, packing a little back pack for three weeks of vacation in Bali and Melbourne, last days of work and leaving Sydney. Uff! So much happening but enjoying every moment.

Many readers have been expecting this post, so here it goes!

U B U D
From Denpasar airport expect an hour drive to Ubud center.

Ubud is a place where people smiles all day, everyone will offer their services (taxi is the most common), you will see temples every two meters, offerings in the street and sidewalks, many scooters and people smoking flavored cigarettes.

Travel Diaries: Barcelona Day One

This past June I visited Spain for the first time and I have to say I pretty much fell in love with this country. We visited Barcelona, Córdoba, Sevilla, Madrid and Toledo in 10 days.

B A R C E L O N A

We arrived from Rome on the night of the 14th because our flight was delayed. When you have your whole trip planned and booked this delays really make you loose time. I was traveling with my mom and she wanted to book everything in advance because June is high season.

Anyways, we decided to get up really early on the 15th so we could make the most of the day. 

We were staying next to Lesseps station so it was walking distance to the center of the city. At 8:15 we were on the entrance of Parc Guell with the app downloaded into my tablet (they open at 8:30 so we wanted to be the first people there). Gaudí for me is a genius with no precedent and I have admired his work since I was 19.

My beautiful mom.

Blue Mountains

One of the things most of you told me to do while living in Sydney was to visit the Blue Mountains. 

As I am a fan of nature and mountains, the name of this place was so attractive to me and I couldn't wait to have time to visit.

A Stationary Club

I was going through my feedly and I bumped across A Beautiful Mess blog where they featured a really interesting stationary club.

This project called "Happy Mail" consists of a monthly subscription to a stationary kit worth $50 for only $15 a month. And the send it to your doorstep.

The idea is always to have a stock of nice stationary, stickers, notepads or journals for you to send letters or greeting cards to your loved ones.

Normally I spend $15 for three cards in any stationary store, so the price of Happy mail makes me happy.

You can find more about this project here and subscribe here

I love this kind of projects, specially living in Chile where there are very few pretty stationary shops and they are often really expensive. I think it's because Chile is so far south from the rest of the world and the shipping is so expensive.

Well if you are in Chile you can subscribe to Happy Mail and the international fee is only of $2.

Window Seat Paintings

Is not that I’m scared of flying but many times when I’m in the air I can’t avoid thinking what would happen if my plane crashes. I think about the moments before touching ground or water. Would I feel calm? Would I cry? Would I pray? Oh shit. 

The moment that I love the most about flying is when I’m up up up in the air, and I have a love-hate relationship with taking off and landing.

What I love of taking off and landing: is when I can see houses, highways, water, fields and pools like a tiny lego village. Cool stuff.

What I hate of taking off and landing: is that -if we crash- the fall would be so short and I wouldn’t have time to think or say mental goodbye.

That’s why the work of Jim Darling is so refreshing to me. He paints what you can see from the window of your plane but in such palette that I can breathe relaxed and not feel the anxiety of what would happen next.

That picture that you always take blurry because the window is so dirty is perfect in his art

Travel Diaries: Stockholm

We landed on Arlanda's Stockholm Airport an took the shuttle to the Central Station where we walked about 20 mins to our hostel Archipelago in Gamla Stan, the most old and touristic part of Stockholm.

Travel Diaries: London Part 2

HYDE PARK

One of my biggest dreams was to study at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London while in London so I booked two short courses at the Kings Cross campus.

Week 1: Ceramics Intermediate

Week 2: Business For Creatives

My Airbnb flat was only 15 minutes walking and that helped me calm my anxiety of the first day doing what I enjoy the most: Ceramics. Maybe since I started this blog I've never wrote a post about my experience with ceramics so I will explain a little.

Travel Diaries: London 01

MILLENIUM BRIDGE & ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

Everything started last year -2013- when I found myself feeling trapped in a job that didn't let me grow, my friends following their personal paths -getting married a lot, working, having other groups of friends aside, whatever- and a fat savings account.

Blog Collaboration: I Love Chakula

Photo: http://www.topwithcinnamon.com/

Good morning Sydney and good night Santiago!

I'm so excited to announce my first blog collaboration with the food and lifestyle blog I LOVE CHAKULA. Chakula means 'food' in Swahili and this blog is all about food, recipes, restaurants and anything related to food.

Sending love

As a designer I'm a huge fan of stationary and good quality illustration. When I was traveling earlier this year I decided it was the perfect time to send letters or postcards to people I love.

Whenever I saw a stationary store or a wall of postcards inside a museum store I stopped for about 30 minutes to find the perfect postcard -traveling alone was great for postcard scouting, because not everyone likes to stay that much time in that particular activity-.

Travel Diaries: Iceland

Everybody who knows me knows that my top #1 destination in this planet was Iceland. I've been dreaming to go there for at least 5 years because of it's cultural scene, landscape and cold -yes, I tend to like cold, dress in cozy clothes, put on a hat and drink a cup of coffee-.

My dream came true when I organized my journey through Scandinavia with my sister Florencia.

Day 01
From Bergen Airport, Norway to Keflavík Airport, Iceland.