Sunday, April 19, 2015

Barcelona, Spain

During the Easter break we embarked on our first real 'wander' around Europe. A big part of the "I'm moving to London" caper was to travel around without having the long-ass 24 hour flight to just get into the neighbourhood. I love my country but sometimes Australia feels sooooo far from everywhere else and a flight to get to a holiday usually drains so much of your holiday energy before it even begins. 

We however, left a dreary London and 2 hours later we walked out to a very sunny Barcelona. We decided to just catch the train into town after reading it was pretty easy and frequent. When we got a train ticket from the ticket lady who kept repeating 'ten', we thought we had a ticket that would let 10 people ride for the day. "Coooool" we shouted as we sussed out the wide gate in an attempt to get the 5 of us through the gates before they jammed shut. SUCCESS! We made it through.

"Excuse me, excuse me!" the security man yelled. He took our ticket and proceeded to check it through the machine 4 more times. Duh. We got 10 rides for 10 euros....NOT unlimited rides for 10 people. You live and you learn right.

So anyways we didn't have a chance to research the must-see-and-do things in Barcelona because we were so busy with work so we kinda just rolled up and handled it that way. Our train station was only a few minutes walk away from our hotel and after we checked in and removed a few more of our London-layers, we were out exploring on foot. 

We stayed at Cuatro Naciones in La Rambla. It was a very clean 2 star simple hotel and was one of the most booked places of 2014 in Barcelona. I booked all our flights and hotels independently and I primarily looked for hotels that were cheap, well rated and close to public transport on booking.com. I found this website extremely useful with many hotels offering a book now, pay later option which meant we could all pay without the hassle of one person covering the cost.

This place cost us around 25 pounds per night each and we were so happy with the central location. The Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria was less than 10 minutes walk down the road our eyes feasted 
on the stalls packed with colourful fruits and sweets whilst we slurped refreshing juice cocktails. 

We enjoyed walking through the Gothic Quarter soaking up the atmosphere and sunshine. I think Barcelona
was a group favourite and such a contrast to London. This city is friendly and easy to navigate with little
to no research and it's a place we all plan on visiting again.








Check out @sikilou and @miss_magenta_ on instagram for more pics


Big love,

Mele Falala

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

10 months ago

It's crazy to even think that 10 months ago I turned 30. So much has changed within 10 months and I realised that I haven't even shared the pics from my 30th birthday with you all. I don't know why people freak out about turning 30....when my 30th birthday rolled around the corner it felt like another birthday. I've never really made a big deal out of birthdays and I think I wanted a birthday party last year because I was getting ready to move over to London.


I didn't want anything fancy....just a good old fashioned backyard party with family and friends. When I grew up, I attended some really good house parties....you know the kind where strangers rock up but everyone leaves knowing someone new, with a few new stories to trade with friends on Monday when errbody got back to school.

We kicked it 90 styles because that takes me back to my doe-eyed-I'm-so-innocent teen years. When friends wrote letters to each other or shared a 3-way chats on the home phone. When music was recorded off the radio and when you scrawled the name of your crush on school books and had you to wait and hope to see them around school. Those were the days.

The weather was weirdly and ridiculously cold for May and I honestly felt like we were going to freeze. Biggest shout out to my family and friends who all made the effort to dress up and perform (my friends and family performed some of their fave hits of the 90's) IT WAS THE BEST!!!

I really wanna host a summer party when I get home to my big back yard! I didn't edit these because I kind of like them as is, with all the imperfections. Eyes closed, mouths open...these are what my pics looked like back in the day anyway. I will see if I can find some of my old backyard party pics to share with y'all.

Anyways here are the pics of my beautiful people (some who drove interstate from Melbourne and Mildura and some who drove down from Sydney to surprise me). Thank you to everyone who made it possible, especially my little sister who ran around organising everything so I could try to enjoy the party. Love you.