Bistro Franz

If you have been to the Czech Republic as a tourist, Brno, the second largest city in the country, is most likely a city you have never visited.  Perhaps you recognize the name as a city you passed on route to Vienna or Mikulov (the Moravian wine region in the south), but not as a city you spent time in and visited.

I don’t know why Brno is passed over time and time again, but if more spots like Bistro Franz open up, which serves seasonal dishes made with local and organic  ingredients from local suppliers, it may give tourists and design-conscious-Prager-foodies a reason to get in the car and drive the hour and a half to visit.

Photo Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

I for one, now have this spot on my radar.  I will follow up when I go visit and taste test in person. Did I mention this place serves brunch on the weekends including porridge, scrambled organic eggs, and pancakes?

Antimultivitamin for Red Pif

Design worlds are colliding!  One of my favourite artists/illustrators in Prague, Antimultivitamin, whose work I saw at last year’s at Design Supermarket, designed the logo for a wine bar I love in the city called Red Pif.  If you haven’t been, Red Pif is the wine bar in Prague 1 that has massive window shutters that look like wine bottles (you can see in the illustration below what I am referring to).  The restaurant and bar has a beautiful interior and an impressive looking wall-of-wine.

Photo Source: Antimultivitamin

This year, Design Supermarket returns to Prague December 5th-9th.  I can’t wait to see what new, local designers I discover this time round.

Somewhere in Provence

I am somewhere in Provence today hopefully visiting this “quaint” place: Comptoir Loranger

Photo Sources: 1, 2-3

My Love Hate Relationship with Google Maps

I need to vent!  I am going to rant a bit before boarding a plane for Lyon about mapping. I travel, I plan, I like to stay organized, I like maps and I like maps with pretty colours and pictures. Is that too much to ask?

I often use Google maps as a map tool to chart out driving routes, walking trips, city escapes and everything in between but for some reason, despite all my mapping and input of content, I am never satisfied with my end result.

I admit, Google maps is good to map driving routes from a functional perspective and to have all of your addresses organized in a list, but if you want to get a bit creative and make your stops look a little nicer with some visual eye candy, you are out of luck.  The Google map’s point of interest graphics are limited, drawing lines in the program is annoying, and deleting lines and points are even more annoying.

My husband and I spent a couple hours putting the finishing touches on our honeymoon road map which kicks off today and we both were extremely frustrated by the map process.  Yes our stuff is in there, but it looks like crap.

All is not lost.  I know it is possible, someway, some how to make a nice Google map.  Cee Cee, behind the great Berlin weekly email newsletter has a terrific Google map with all the cool spots in Berlin.  Cee Cee, I need a lesson!! If you ever stumble upon this post and feel like making someone’s day, please, let me know how you created such a beautiful map of Berlin?  Kudos to your superior mapping skills and/or graphic design.

Photo Source: 1

Cee Cee seems to know what to do and how to navigate the design frustrations and limitations of Google maps  because their maps look amazing and are easy to read.  I even watched the Google map video help guide and still felt that the design oomph I desired was unclearly explained.   I am open to any or all tips, suggestions or learning points to alleviate the stress associated with future maps!

The Wedding: Photos + Details

And here we go…. some wedding photos and details (below)…

Venue: Revival Bar
Groom’s Suit + Shirt: Suit Supply, Shoes: Paul Smith, Socks: Happy Socks
Boutonnieres: The Little Red Button
Bride’s Dress + Bolero Jacket: Elisabetta Franchi – Headpiece: HT Headwear Jewelry: Stella and Dot necklace, JCrew bracelets, Rings: Fine Jewelry By Collette
Bridesmaids: Their own dresses
Lanterns: Luna Bazaar
Catering: Rustico Fine Foods
Photographer: Marcin Moka Photography
Make-up: Katie Dack + Julia Dorosh (Kirsh Cosmetics)
DJ: Bellosound
Cake + Cupcakes: Flour Studio
Flowers + Bride’s Bouquet: Pink Twig
Gelato: Hotel Gelato

Holly Berry Love Morse Code

I hope you had a nice weekend. I still think I am getting over jet lag. For some reason, I still feel extremely sleep deprived and groggy in the mornings but I think by tomorrow, I will be fine.  It’s a good thing too as I am heading on my honeymoon later this week.

This weekend, the weather took a turn for the colder in Prague. It was hovering between 14-18 degrees and quite dreary with grey skies and rain.  The weather certainly did not make our weekly farmer’s market shop enjoyable.  Even though the sun came out on Sunday just before dinner, I felt like taking out a blanket and curling up in front of a movie all day Saturday.

Speaking of curling up, have you seen the colourful Love-Morse Code blankets from Holly Berry in the UK?

I love her woven blankets.  They are called Love blankets because her blankets spell “love” using the Morse-code.  Her blankets are woven in Scotland and would make a beautiful addition to a living room with a fireplace.  I am a sucker for wool, what can I say?

Photo Source: Holly Berry

Love This!: P-Vine Travel Guide Books + Welcome Beyond

I am getting set to do a bit of travelling in the next couple weeks and in my research, I stumbled across these lovely travel guide books from Japanese publisher, P-Vine Books.

Photo Source: P-Vine Books

Even though I cannot understand Japanese, these look like cool books to have on a coffee table.  The illustrations and photography are beautiful and would still be helpful, no doubt.

On a separate travel related note-  has anyone used or seen this travel site for booking unique apartments and boutique hotels?  I just found it yesterday and I am in loveeeeee. It’s called Welcome Beyond “Hand Picked Paradise.”  Had I found it earlier, I may have used it to book some of my honeymoon stops.  The properties on this site are unbelievable.  Most are apartments/houses to rent but I did see a handful of smaller, unique hotels on the site as well.

It is interesting to think about why we find things when we find them.  Welcome Beyond is not a new site, but I only learned about it yesterday.  I wonder what led me to it.

If I could re-book the hotels on my upcoming route using Welcome Beyond, I would look at saying at:

– L’ancienne Post in Provence

– 42 Rue Victor Hugo in Languedoc-Roussillon

– Alemanys 5 in Girona, Spain

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks that Welcome Beyond is neat:

1. Yatzer: Welcome Beyond + interview

2. Flodeau: Welcome Beyond Hand Picked Paradise

3. Happiness Is: Welcome Beyond

4. Miss Moss: Welcome Beyond

Enjoy travel dreaming, dear readers! I hope this has provided some inspiration.

Wedding Day: Getting Ready

What does it mean to get ready the day of a wedding? Here is a sample of what my day looked like last Sunday.

8:00 AM Wake UPPPPP!!! We’re getting married today.  It’s time to get a move on.

9:00 AM My fiance and I started off by having a quick breakfast of pancakes and muesli at the George Street Diner on Richmond Street in Toronto.  We figured we might as well have at least one good, full meal, considering the rest of the day was only going to be scraps of food here and there.

12 PM Following breakfast, we ran four errands before returning to the hotel including picking up extra fishing wire to hang lanterns (just in case), little Kleenex packages for anyone who needed, Sharpies and a guest signing book for the bar plus a couple other little just-in-case items.

We packed up all the things we needed to take with us for the day, then hopped in the car to drive across the city to Parlour Salon on Ossington where my bridal party and I had our hair styled.  The team at Parlour was wonderful and fast.  I sought them out originally because they were open on Sunday and just down the street from the venue.  In Toronto, it can be rather difficult to find a good salon that is open!). I may have started in curlers but I ended with straight hair.

2:30PM After all the hair washing, drying and curling was complete, we jumped in a taxi and headed over to the venue on College Street (Revival Bar), where we got straight to work building the chuppah (out of PVC pipes and ribbon), watching all the paper lanterns get hung on the ceiling, getting our make up done, and enjoying the hustle and bustle of people arriving, waiting, clearing, moving, and organizing wedding event “stuff.”

5:00 PM After the rest of our family members arrived, we got dressed and handed out photo props for the upcoming photo session before the ceremony.

6:45 PM After we took our last photo, we were ready to start the first part of the wedding ceremony.

Photographer: Marcin Moka

Stay tuned for more wedding photos plus a complete list of day of vendors.

Hope you are having a good Wednesday! We just had an unbelievable sun shower in Prague and now the rooftops are glistening out my window.  What was your pre-wedding wedding day like?