Five Days at the Mall

Playing: Kids in the Street-The All American Rejects
Reading: Mr. Darcy Wikipedia Page

I've gone to South Coast Plaza five times in the last week, two of them with my brother, who is on the verge of killing me for forcing him to go to the mall so often. We decided to try AnQi, which has been called the best restaurant in Orange County by Orange Coast. The atmosphere and service were incredible. For instance, if you asked for water, they gave you refreshing cucumber water. Also, when asked where the bathroom was, they offered to escort you there. One waitress took this man's young son to the bathroom and even walked him back to the table that way the man didn't need to get up and could continue eating.

For our appetizer, we shared the Takuwan Roll with our mum. It's a basic roll with avocado, cucumber, carrot, daikon, and beet served on a bed of curry. I personally found it very refreshing and tasty, but considering, it's only veggies, it was too expensive for my liking. It was nice having a curry dipping sauce, though.

Whenever a restaurant has something they're known for, I always try that, so I ordered An's Famous Garlic Noodles with Beef. The beef was exceptional, but I found the noodles to only be average. It was extremely garlicky, which I liked a lot, but the noodles had a weird pasty texture as if the sauce had started to curdle or something. It really needed something like scallions to brighten up the whole dish. I also suggest making the sauce smoother. For me, this Californian-Vietnamese fusion restaurant could use some improvements and felt like it was a place for those unfamiliar with Asian cuisine to get a taste of it.

On another day, I went only with my mum that way I had a chance to look around, I came across this interesting display at Louis Vuitton for their collaboration with the Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. I love how Marc Jacobs is constantly having Louis Vuitton do collaborations with different artists like Takashi Murakami and Stephen Sprouse. Personally, I think the Murakami collaboration was the most fun and I'm trying to get my hands on a bag from the collection still. There was another Kusama window display with tentacles and my mum was wondering if they were inflatable, so I calmly walked in and jabbed one of them with a finger, while the security guard was giving me odd looks. Fun times, huh?

Then on another day with my mum, I went shopping at Zara for some new clothes. This is my first time shopping and buying something at Zara, so I have to admit, I found Zara so stressful! The clothes were in piles and there were Asian women and Persian men fighting over clothes, so I only lasted 45 minutes in the store. I however did find (ANOTHER) black sweater for myself, but this has an interesting cutout on the back for only $19! Since the sweater was inexpensive, I didn't feel too guilty buying this white collared tank with metal details to layer under the black sweater. It's dressy, edgy, and casual all at the same time!

Ooh, and I fell in love with Alexander Wang's Anouck boots at Nordstrom on the fourth day! Only four Nordstroms in the USA carry Alexander Wang. How lucky am I to have one of them so close to me? I'm tempted to use my employee discount and just grab them for myself! They only have two pairs left in my size and they're selling out quickly, so I don't think I'll be able to purchase them on sale. The decisions I face in my life are so petty sometimes. But listen to me, I missed out on my dream Marni moccasins, so I'm really debating if I should just grab these. I might end up regretting not getting them, but I also want to get sunglasses and buying both is way too much money.

Left to Right: Tina, Jessy, me, and Michael

Also, I started a collaborative fashion blog with Tina, Jessy, and Michael, which is called The Suburban Urbanites. We went to the mall again that way I could introduce the three of them to each other, so I hope you can follow that blog too. We hope to offer you advice on style, share outfits, and share opinions on runway shows with you. Hope to see you there!

PS Congratulations to Ryan Lochte, Kimberly Rhode, and Dana Vollmer for winning gold medals for the USA! Congrats to the rest of Team USA that has also won any type of medals. Keep on kicking ass at the Olympics for me, alright?

Spain: Day 4

Playing: Take My Hand-League
Reading: Harper's Bazaar July 2012

My dad made us wake up extra early to go stand in line for the Museu Picasso, since the day before, we had gone, only to find a line that went on forever and ever. We showed up 45 minutes before opening time and still ended up something like twelfth in line. This is a picture of the line five minutes before opening. I couldn't even see the end of the line. Pretty crazy, huh? This was one of the few art museums from my trip that I think is worth visiting, but definitely get in line early! I suggest having one person wait in line, while another goes and gets breakfast for everyone. That way you have something to munch on in line.

Once we got through the museum, my dad took us to the Parc de la Ciutadella. It's well known mostly for this fountain, which I think depicts the birth of Venus. It took us awhile to figure out what it was, but then my Percy Jackson skills kicked in and I remembered everything. You can see Neptune, Venus, Apollo, and hippocamps on this fountain plus tons of ducks swimming around. The whole park is incredibly beautiful and I highly recommend visiting it during your trip.

For lunch, we found ourselves at a buffet focused on healthy eating. We were actually walking to another museum, but I started to get fussy with my dad and complained to him, "We've been up for five hours already and it's one o'clock! I'm starving and it's freaking hot." So to shut me up, he pointed to two restaurants across the street and said, "Pick your poison." I chose TERRABLAVA because it was the cheaper and cleaner of the two. It actually turned out to be pretty tasty and I recommend eating there, if you're running low on money. For 10€, I got unlimited orange lemon juice, pasta salad, croquettes, potato salad, pasta, chicken wings, roasted veggies, and all sorts of other things. It didn't have a lot of meat, but I didn't mind. The roasted tomatoes were incredible and I wish I saved room in my stomach for more. They even had dessert there, which was all included.

While at TERRABLAVA, we gave up on heading towards the Roman and medieval museums, deciding that we had already seen enough, while we were in Rome. We had to convince my dad to take a cab to Parc Guell, which is on practically every postcard. The taxi ride there was hot and stuffy, but it was worth going to the park. It was another one of Gaudi's creations, so my family and I walked around the park and admired the mosaics. I spent a lot of time people watching and I found this group of cute British guys. You British girls have no idea how lucky you all are to have such good looking men. It seems you have a higher cute guy to girl ratio than I do, where I live. Actually, I think I've mentioned this before, but seriously Europe, why do you get more handsome men?

At Parc Guell, they had a band performing and I decided I want to go to a park with my friends and play music. Since I lack any type of musicality, I shall be the chick with the tambourine that just dances around and lends background harmonies. Sounds good to me. By the way, the girl in this band actually did sing. I'm not trying to make fun of her. Introducing, The Mananers, the only band I know that's "high everyday."

We took a cab back to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, where we had explored the parks earlier that week. Since they were open this day, we decided to go and I got in for free because I'm still considered a minor. A lot of these places offer discounts for students, so bring your student ID with you! I personally didn't like this art museum because it consisted of mostly religious paintings. However, on the second floor, they did have some pretty impressionist paintings, but none of the artists there are well known except for Picasso. I do recommend walking around this area because there's a lot to look at. The Plaza Espanya became my go-to area for whenever we had free time mostly because it was close to our hotel and look at how pretty the MNAC building is!

We went back to Las Ramblas for dinner and this time round, La Boqueria was open, so we went to go check it out. I recommend going earlier on in the day because it was starting to close up, when we went. It was interesting to see all the meats they had there that we don't have in the USA or at least in the USA, they're considered specialty meats such as: goat, rabbits, and some other unidentifiable meats. I was tempted to buy some of the candy there, but I was all out of cash.

For dinner, we just chose a place along Las Ramblas that way I could people watch and look for cute guys. (Man, do I have a brain that's focused on one thing or what?) We ended up eating at Pita House, so I ordered a prosciutto pizza, but I think the rest of the world has a different definition of prosciutto than I do. The meat on this pizza is called ham in the USA, not prosciutto. The pizza was truthfully kind of soggy and bland. I don't recommend it at all. If you're going go try Pita House, go inside the restaurant to the less touristy part and order the Persian food. When I went to use the loo, it smelled so good in the restaurant part! On the bright side, the table next to me had these two really cute guys in colored jeans. I didn't know you could do this, but a man tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked for a cigarette before walking away and one of the guys just gave it to him! I mean really, in the USA, I've never seen a complete stranger bum a smoke off of someone unless they're hitting on the person. If they were flirting, he would've stayed, not walked away, right? Crazy stuff you see out there, right? (I am most certainly overreacting...)

Spain: Day 3 Part 2

Playing: There is a Light That Never Goes Out-The Smiths
Reading: James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

After the Casa Mila, we returned to the area by our hotel and explored the gardens and buildings around the MNAC. I highly suggest walking around in all the gardens surrounding it. You get a great view of the ocean and get to see tons of spectacular buildings. A soccer camp for elementary school age boys was just getting out, so there was a whole rush of boys in bright soccer jerseys running around with parents chasing after them. How cute!

We probably spent a good two to three hours just walking around and people watching, but then we got hungry, so we headed down to Arenas de Barcelona for dinner. It used to be a bull fighting rink, but they transformed it into a modern mall with stores like MANGO, Claire's, Desigual, etc. It was amazing how big it was inside and on the bottom most floor, they had all these places for food. We went to the very top, where the restaurants were for dinner.

This was the amazing view that you got from the top most floor and you got to see this, while eating dinner. Pretty much all of the restaurants would offer you a different, beautiful view. Surprisingly, the food here wasn't as over priced as it was in other parts of town.

We chose La Lola, since it was one of the few restaurants offering Spanish food. It was mostly a tapas restaurants, but you could get sandwiches there too. Up above, you can see the salt cod fritters, breaded baby goat chops from Segovia, Iberian ham shavings, cold tomato soup, and the bread with tomato sauce. The soup was absolutely delicious and my family was fighting over who would get the last bit of it. I won. The Iberian ham shavings was basically prosciutto, but when put on top of the bread with tomato sauce, it was so good.

We also tried the paella, which was only ok. It tasted too much of seafood and the rice was kind of burnt. However, the fried eggplants with honey was amazing. It was cut so thin, it was like a crisp. The honey sauce had a molasses under taste to it, which was surprising. It was so good that we ordered a second batch.

I developed quite the liking for the Spanish tapa called potatas bravas, but at La Lola, they were called the unforgettable bravas. I am a lover of fried potatoes, so topping it with spicy mayo just makes it that much better, so I took delight in chowing down on this.

After dinner, we headed back to the MNAC area to watch the water show that's held nightly from 9:00PM-10:00PM during the summer. We caught a showing towards 10:00PM that was synched with American music from the 1980's, so pretty much, all my favorites. There were a lot of people in their 20's there dancing, drinking, and just pretty much having fun. A lot of gay couples were there dancing and I guess, if you want to find other young people to befriend, this is the area. I became friends with two Americans, while I was there and we talked about which sites we were going to go to next. Then the clock ticked by and somehow it was 11:00PM already and we decided it was time to go back to the hotel, even though none of us were tired.

Whatever, Whatever, I Do As I Please

Playing: 1901-Phoneix
Reading: Antigone by Sophocles

Disclaimer everyone, I am not a title making genius. Let's just get on with the show about what I did over the weekend.  As you probably know, I love Tim Burton a lot. I love his movies, poems, and art, so I was dying to go see Dark Shadows. While it did leave me feeling disappointed, I have to disagree with the critics that said it wasn't funny at all. There were tons of awkward moments, where the main character Barnabas (Johnny Depp) from the 1760's had to adapt to the 1970's and all the modern appliances, that were chuckle worthy. Although this movie was dry from time to time, the beautiful set and well thought out costumes totally made up for it. The main complaint I have with this movie is that too many story lines were going on. If they cut out Bella Heathcote's unimportant story of how her parents left her in a mental house and Chloe Grace Moretz'z random transformation into a werewolf, the movie would've been a lot better.

I also tried the Turkey Melt at Berkeley Dog, which was unlike any other Turkey Melt I've had. It had slices of turkey covered in grilled onions, cheese, and bacon. I'm used to the typical turkey melt with American cheese, so this was definitely a step up and it was a decent price.

 My friend, Sophie, let me use her Chanel nail polish from Spring/Summer 2008 called Antelope. This has to be one of the prettiest nail polishes I have ever used. It's tan with a metallic shine and when you go out into the sun, it looks like the prettiest blush ever. My camera did not pick up how pretty this color is and frankly, it looks kind of bland in this photo, but trust me, this is such a gorgeous color. It almost looked like I had pearls on my nails and what made it so pretty is how close it is to my skin color, so it was also subtle. In class, I could not stop staring at my nails. Considering Chanel nail polish is like $30, I was not impressed by its staying power. By the fourth day, it started to chip really badly on all of my nails except my thumbs. By the end of the week, I had to take it off because it was almost all gone.

The Orange County Great Park has been in development for years and part of my summer plan is to check out all the farmers markets within driving distance that I can, so I just had to check out the one at the Great Park. They had tons of cute stalls with specialty items like the local raw honey shown above and organic, gluten-free baked items. They also had fresh vegetables and fruits plus gourmet food trucks, vintage records, dog clothing, and organic pet food. I did buy some amazing nectarines and sweet cherries, while I was there too.

Before going to Daniela's party, I made Chef Michael Symon's 3 Minute Chocolate "Cup" Cakes with my brother. It was such an easy recipe and took next to no time at all. However, I did find I had to microwave everything for twice as long as he suggested. I used one and a half bars of Lindt's 85% cocoa dark chocolate and one bar of Lindt's 70% cocoa dark chocolate. I found that our's came out way too rich, so I think next time I'll use two and a half bars of Lindt's 65% cocoa dark chocolate plus some vanilla extract. I topped mine with whipped cream and the left over chocolate bar crumbled into sprinkles. Eat it while it's hot! It always amazes me how much I can squish into one weekend...Until next time, hope you have a most fabulous day!