No no, I haven’t forgotten about writing or the cupcake experiment. I’ve just been quite busy. I’ve been to Lisbon for a week, which was absolutely wonderful. Lisbon is a great city, perfect for a week long get away. I stayed at possible the best hostel in the world, the Living Lounge Hostel. It’s located in the heart of Lisbon, and the interior design is amazing. All the rooms are unique and have their own ‘theme’. It’s kind of a mix of vintage and modern design. The staff were very friendly and they organized a delicious dinner every night for €8, which included a starter, main course, dessert and wine, and it was perfect to get to know the other guests.
I simply can not recommend this place enough.
Lisbon is just a great city to wonder around, visit the castle, the beautiful viewpoints, walk along the river, enjoy some great food, for example the amazing pasteis de belem, mmmm. And a little day trip to Sintra is also a must do.

Lille by Night, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Exhausted by stress at work I decided to take a little weekend break in Lille, France last weekend. I had already heard some positive things about Lille and since it’s not too far away and very easy to reach by train it was the perfect last-minute city trip.
And what can I say, Lille is great! It’s a lovely little town, beautiful old buildings, lots of little cobblestone streets filled with shops and loads of nice restaurants. It’s very close to the Belgian border and seems to have the best of France and Belgium.

Friday night I met a friend from Lille. He invited me to have dinner at a cheese restaurant called Le broc. It was a very nice experience. The restaurant smelled of cheese, and we had a very tasty cheese fondue and some local beer.

On saturday I ventured out getting lost while walking the small streets of the old quarter, called Vieux Lille, doing some window shopping. I discovered they have some incredibly yummy looking bakeries and pastry shops, especially Meert and L’abbaye de saveurs. And there is a wonderful tea salon called ‘Tous les jours Dimanche’, they have a big selection of teas and a long list of delicious home made pies. I had the pistachio nut raspberry pie and it was finger-licking good.
In the evening I took my tripod and camera and went out to take some nice shots of Lille by night. I discovered that there are hundreds of very cosy looking restaurants in the Rue de Gand, only after I had already had dinner

Sunday morning I took the metro to Wazemme to have a look at the famous Marché du Wazemme, a market that is supposed to be quite exotic and big, but I was a little bit disappointed. I arrived there by 10 o’clock and it seemed like they were still setting up their stalls, maybe because it had rained before. It was also not as exotic as I expected, most stalls just sold a lot of junk. Compared to the Marché du Midi in Brussels, this market was a big waste of time. Maybe this market is better in summer…

I returned to the centre of Lille where I a had a great lunch with a friend from Bratislava before we both headed to the train station for our trip back home…

Djemaa El-Fna Food, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Live Performance on Djemaa El-Fna, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Djemaa el-Fna sunset, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Djemaa El-Fna Food, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Bab Agnaou, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Just a a little time ago I was still dreaming of Morocco and here I am, already back from my trip to Marrakesh. I went to Marrakesh for a week in the beginning of May. It’s such an amazing place, even though it has become extremely touristy.
The Djemaa El-Fna Square is where a lot of the action takes place, especially at night when a bunch of open air restaurants set up, selling the best Moroccan food, and acrobats, musicians, snake charmers and other artists perform for hundreds of people, both tourists and Moroccans.
The medina (the old city) is a great place to just walk around and get lost, there are so many nice little corners that would probably be impossible to find if you try to, so the best way is to let chance take you there.
I also took a organized excursion to the Ourika Valley, which is a beautiful valley about an hour outside of Marrakesh. It’s at the foot of the Atlas mountains and the views were spectacular.
And I visited Essaouira, a little town at the Atlantic Ocean. It was refreshing change from Marrakesh with the nice sea breeze and cooler temperatures.
I had a great time in Morocco. I stayed at a wonderful little riad called “Casa Del Sol”, a nice low-budget place with extremely friendly managers. I would definitely recommend staying there, especially when traveling alone like I did, it’s a great place to meet people.
Being a vegetarian, it was not really a problem to find vegetarian food, but I have to admit that I ended up eating vegetarian tajine or vegetarian couscous (which is basically the same) a lot. At the end of my stay however, I discovered this great little vegetarian restaurant in Marrakesh, theEarth Cafe and I wish I’d known about it before, ’cause they had some really delicious food on their menu.
For more pictures, please visit my Flickr page .

Essaouria port, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Zona Tortona – paper chairs, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

After hearing so many exciting things about the Salone del Mobile in Milan, one of the biggest design fairs in the world, my colleague and I decided to go for a weekend. We had to design brochures to hand out to visitors of the Jaga stand and a special book for the fair (I’ll post a link to the book later) and it would be a great opportunity to see our work in action.
So the 24th of april we flew to Milan for a 3 day visit. The fair is huge. There’s the official part on the fair grounds and there’s the part in the city centre, mostly in the Zona Tortona, but also elsewhere in Milan. We only managed to see the part in the city, and even this part we didn’t see completely. It is hard to say which stands were my favorite since there were so many to take in. Everything at Superstudios was really nice, and I also liked the Moroso stand a lot with the African influences.
Even though it was a very expensive weekend (hotel prices soar during the fair), it was definitely worth it. We had a great time and I would mind going again next year…
For more pictures of my trip to Milan visit my flickr page.

Triennale, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Zona Tortona – Super Studios, originally uploaded by ibeepix.