The Time Traveler’s Wife

June 15, 2013 | patriciablaj

Or how I felt while walking around the idle, romantic little alleys of Rome. Well, I am by no means married, but I definitely felt like I somehow got lost and fell down the rabbit hole in another time. All the old buildings, the warm winds, the friendly people, my princess complex sky-rocketed.
I always seems to have an excuse as to why I don’t post as much as I used to, mostly because it’s true, I would post a lot if I wouldn’t be bothered by other stuff I have yet to wrap my mind around. This time it’s family issues I put the blame on, my beloved grandma might be sick, but we don’t know yet for sure how serious it is. I want to keep being positive, but it’s so damn hard. I just can’t imagine life without my grandma, she means the world to me and I honestly don’t know how I’d get over it if she suddenly disappeared…
Anyway, I wasn’t planning to be melodramatic here, I just wanted to share some more of my view of Rome, but I assume you’re already used to it, I always start talking about something and end up ranting about complete different stuff. I hope you’ll have a great weekend!

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Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum

June 11, 2013 | patriciablaj

I know, I know, I should do a walk of shame right now considering it’s been almost two weeks since I posted something, but the weather has been a hater lately, it’s been raining on an off daily therefore I’ve been caught in the pouring water apocalypse every day (and no, considering how hard it rained, umbrellas were of no use) so I was in no condition of taking outfit shots, sadly.
On a lighter note, I got my host families’ data and they’re all so cute, and one family has a shiba dog (like Hachiko, for who’s seen the movie), gosh I can’t wait to abuse him :3
I’ve been craving the sea a lot lately, mostly because my mom and brother went in Turkey on holiday without me. One of the cities in which I’ll stay in Japan is by the shore, hopefully I’ll be able to go swim a few times, too. Below I’d like to share with you some photos from my trip to Crete from last summer. As some of you know, the Mediterranean Sea is incredibly beautiful, colour wise. Well, the water is clear, obviously, which makes it easy to spot fish and other cute sea creatures all the time. It was really warm too, at the end of August, swimming was darling. Enjoy!

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A Mediteranean jewel

May 1, 2013 | patriciablaj

I’ve been incredibly moody all day and I’ve got no clue why. I’m finally on my second pseudo spring break and that should make me happy, instead it made me pissed-offy and restless and nothing I did made me feel better. I cleaned up my laptop, which ended in me deleting permanently pictures I still damn needed and as you can imagine that made me slump even lower than before. I ended up eating some dark chocolate and cursing at the heat when it started melting all over my hands. This sudden heat wave (obviously) made me thing of summer, last summer to be precise. And so I decided to look at the photos I took in Crete and remembered I’ve been a lazyass slacker all last summer and didn’t blog about any of it.
The hotel we stood in was a total beauty, it wasn’t a big chunky building as most are, it was made out of tiny little houses spread all over the resort. We were (obviously) given rooms in the furthest one, but I didn’t really mind, walking around the resort was exhilarating. I’ll leave you enjoy the Cretan beauty now, for little mean comments keep popping up regarding everything in my hear right now due to my difficult mood and I wouldn’t want to spoil any of it.

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Roma mi amor

April 28, 2013 | patriciablaj

Saturdays always put me in a lazy mood, the kind that when it strikes, all I want to do is think, listen to music and read. Nothing more adventurous or calorie consuming. Most of the times I end up strolling on memory lane. This morning while I was cleaning my laptop a bit since it was running low on space (again), I stumbled upon a batch of pictures from Rome that I haven’t shared with you.
I fell in love with Rome, it made me feel almost as princessy as Paris did. The thing I miss the most abut it, though, is the company. I miss spending whole days with mom and her alone, not being bothered by work or school or any worry in the world except the soreness of our feet caused by too much walking.

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The climb to God: Yamadera

April 8, 2013 | patriciablaj

When I asked people the first three words that come to their mind if they think about Japan the words I heard most of the time were skyscrapers, robots, anime, cosplay, everything related to the industrialized and Japan’s urban area. So many people tend to forget how breathtakingly beautiful and unique the Japanese nature is. Hell, where else can you see monkeys crossing the road in front of you? It happened to me once, there are hundreds on mountain monkeys in more remote areas.

Anyway, I strayed from the subject of this post a little, as I usually do. In my second trip to Japan I visited the Yamadera temple, lovated in a tiny mountain city with the same name. The temple was founded over 1000 years ago, in 860, under the official name Risshakuji and its grounds extend high up a steep mountainside. Yamadera, its popular name can be translated as mountain temple.
The holy complex is pretty popular due to Basho’s (a famous haiku poet) visit. A statue of him and an inscription of his famous poem can be found in the lower area, unfortunately I didn’t know that at the time of my visit. His poem (Shizukesaya / Iwa ni shimiiru / Semi no koe) can be translated or more likely interpreted (Japanese is really difficult to literally translate, mot a mot) in two ways: “This pervasive silence / Enhanced yet by cicadas simmering” and “Silence and penetrating into the rocks — the cry of the cicada”.

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Rain on the samurai city

March 25, 2013 | patriciablaj

One of the prettiest old cities I’ve visited in Japan was Kakunodate. Founded in 1620, it used to be the home of 80 families and it had two districts: one for the samurais and one for the merchants. Almost 400 years later, Kakunodate still has some of the best examples of samurai architecture in Japan. The samurai city is also well known for the beauty and the abundance of its cherry trees: in spring it’s one of the most sought sakura viewing spot in the Tohoku area.

Unfortunately for us, it was raining the day we visited. I don’t know how summer rain is in your country, but the one we had in Kakunodate was a killer: it poured down all day long, no breaks. As time passed it seemed it was only getting stronger, but maybe my patience was wearing thin. Such a pity, we could’ve enjoyed the beautiful city a lot more if we were dry.

Silly us! We went in a small restaurant to grab a bite, hoping the rain would stop. By the time we went out, it was raining harder.

Traveling in style is an understatement. My flats were fully soaked and started to rub against my skin and cause blisters, so I just took them off.

Kakunodate, at least the samurai district is opened for visitors. Most of the buildings host tiny museums, with the families belongings and the sorts. You can also find a lot of tiny restaurants and souvenir shops.

In some of the houses’ backyards you could find festival floats. This was definitely my favourite.

Thank you for reading! Have an awesome evening!

An hour in Agios Nikolaos

March 14, 2013 | patriciablaj

When I was with my dad in Crete we took a one-day yacht trip and we had to go aboard from Agios Nikolaos, which is a tiny, cute coastal (duh) city. We didn’t have any time to spare before the trip and sadly even before we went back to the hotel, we only had a little over an hour so we just walked around what looked like the city center and went on a souvenir hunt.

Like any other touristy town, Agios Nikolaos was filled with cute cafes and souvenir shops. I also loved the architecture in Crete’s cities. They reminded me a lot of smaller cities and fishind villages from Japan. Narrow streets, little buildings, apartments with balconies… I miss that a lot.

Thank you very much for reading! Have a nice day:)

Dreamers shall travel: Crete!

February 27, 2013 | patriciablaj

Today has been an incredibly sunny day and as I was browsing through my computer I came across pictures from last summer that I had completely forgotten about! Last summer I kind of took a break from blogging because I wanted to focus more on my non-virtual life so all the pictures I took while being in Crete with my dad had gone to waste. Until now! I miss summer dearly and remembering Crete only makes me miss it more. We’ve been there for a week at the end of August and it was super windy, people were saying that that’s the weather they usually have in October. I’m not a big fan of intense heat so it fit me like a glove. And we all know the consequences of windy weather on the shore. The waves, ah the waves were glorious!

The pictures I chose for today’s post were taken on a one-day boat trip. We rode a bus to the other side of the island and on the way to the harbor we stopped to visit one of Crete’s oldest Christian Churches. I tried to remember its name, but couldn’t and google is not being friendly today either. I remember the guide saying that it was built secretly because at that time Christian practices were banned and people were punished if caught, sometimes even murdered.

One of the sights that took my breath away. If you look closely, you can see the sea above the road, between the cliffs. Another thing I loved about Crete was its cliffs, that they’re usually not bare, they have small bushes and trees growing on them. Such a pittoresque view.

Thank you for reading! If any of you know, by any chance, the name of the Basilica, do tell! Have a nice day!

Friday night magic

February 8, 2013 | patriciablaj

I’m still a little sick and I’ve got a competition tomorrow morning, so there ain’t no party for me tonight. A band I really like is having a concert but after a few minutes of mature pondering on the matter, I came to the conclusion that the competition is more important and I should be properly rested.
Sooo, instead of watching series of reading all evening I thought I’d look for some inspiration. This is what my perfect week-end would look like (hell, the perfect life). Enjoy!

What are your plans for the weekend?

The Saints of Rome

February 5, 2013 | patriciablaj

The weather has been weird lately and on top of that I caught I cold so I didn’t really feel like stripping in the snow for outfit photos last week. I felt particularly bad last night so I ditched school today. I wasn’t planning to blog today because I’m always kind of cranky and sour when I feel unwell, but I was browsing through my folders to find useless crap that should’ve been deleted long ago but I’m a messy and lazy airhead and they’re still there and I found some beautiful pictures I haven’t shared with you from my trip to Rome. I’ve been to Rome last January with my mom and it was great. The weather was incredibly nice for January, at noon we could walk around in Tshirts and the food was YUM. The only happening that ruined my travel was the fact that on the fifth day my memory card decided it would be nice to fail completely and erase EVERYTHING, every single photo I took. I changed my camera and memory card, but I’m never going anywhere without my laptop again.

Vatican was really nice though, except for the fact that I experienced one of my greatest fears there. I felt like crying, puking and killing my mom, but hey, I did it in the end without doing any. Ok, I cried, a little. I’m terrified of small spaces and mom insisted we climb up in the Sistine Chapel to see the city’s panorama and that it’s not a big climb, it’s not that high nor small(she’s been there before). I only said yes thinking I’d have a great view, but to my disappointment we were too high for great panoramas. The climb started nicely, enough space to spread both your arms, but as you went further, guess what? It was squeezing in. The final set of stairs was so narrow, I couldn’t spread my elbows. I can’t explain the terror I felt as I was climbing, to see it get more and more narrow. On the last set of stairs I started to cry and told mom I can’t do this, I was basically begging her to let me out, I was panicking and couldn’t breathe at all. Sadly there were a lot of people behind mom and obviously there wasn’t enough space for two people on those stairs so I had to suck it up and climb. When we finally got up a wave of nausea hit me when I saw how high we were and considered jumping at the thought of having to go down those stairs again. But hey, I did it. I overcame my biggest fear. Although I’m still scared of small spaces.

I was struggling to take photos, bending over fences or trying to squeeze in between the bars when this little fucker came in and decided to ruin it for me. I forgave him though, he was kinda cute. And stupid, just look at his face!

And here’s an emotionally and physically exhausted me. I miss my hair like that sometimes. Also I find it a little funny how the title for this post came to me while humming the Saints of LA from Motley Crue, nothing holy there for sure.

After my little hobo-esque break, we went into the Sistine Chapel. I’m not a religious person, but I kind of like churches, although some paintings/statues creep me out and most priests annoy me. But inside I saw, for the first time, the light. No, not god, literally the light. It was amazingly beautiful, an architectural wonder. It was my mom’s turn to beg me to leave.