Trip #2

This is where I'll be for the next 2 months.
Tokyo, my other home (one of many).

To see family:



To see darling friends:



To feast with my eyes and taste with my tongue:



To wander and savour and connect (with the parts of myself I left there):



And to discover (with camera) the sweet, lovely, strange or funny details hidden amidst the sometimes overwhelming concrete -- the things I want to share with You:

I love New York in the springtime

I couldn't have asked for a prettier week.


Or a lovelier neighborhood to wander in.


Old haunts were revisited.


And a new favourite coffee house discovered.


It was interesting to see how a friend from long ago, was just as I'd remembered her.


And so fun to do a photo shoot in the woods, like we did nearly 10 years ago (even if I did fall in this creek and spend the rest of the afternoon squelching about in wet boots).


Another beautiful day was spent in Lake George. If there is anything better than having the perfect breakfast (eggs, toast, hash browns and bacon), breathing in the cool breeze off a sparkling lake, and then driving through woody back roads that smell like warm sunshine, then I have yet to encounter it.


Unless it's doing all of the above with someone whose hand you love to hold.


Cheerful wildflowers were coming up everywhere -- along the grey, rocky banks of the Hudson,


and from the soft, muddy earth of the woods.


I don't really have the words or the photos to do justice to my time in upstate New York, so I might just say that, were I able to relive just one week out of my whole life again, it would be this one.

les filles collection

The pieces: (clockwise) 1. Antoinette, 2. Colette, 3. Coco (sold), 4. Amelie



The inspiration: (clockwise) 1. Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, 2. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 3. Coco Chanel, 4. Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain


Photo credits: 1. Marie-Antoinette, my new love!, 2. Colette - book flyer, 3. Coco Chanel by Horst, 4. Amelie (Funky)

Upcoming Trip #1: Saratoga Springs

Phila Street

Travel is in the stars this month. It looks as though I may not even have time to unpack from one trip before I'm off on the next.
But first, in two weeks' time I will be in upstate New York, where I haven't been in 8 years. Once upon a time, I used to go to school there.
Things I remember:

- It snowed. A lot. One year it was still snowing in May.

- The dozens of photo shoots my roommates indulged me in. No matter how crazy the makeup or dress I made them wear, they always humoured me.

- "Our" coffee house, Uncommon Grounds. Bliss was a cup of hot white chocolate on a cold snowy night, sitting across from an older boy with a husky voice and blue eyes, who was doing his best to woo me.

- Walking around my pretty campus in knee-high lace-up boots, my faux fur vintage coat barely protecting me from the chill autumn air, collecting red and orange leaves to send to my best friend on the other side of the country.

- Learning to almost, kind of, ride a horse. Cold mornings down in the stables, brushing my horse "Cajun" (a bony old thing missing most his teeth), and then into the ring for the lesson. Sometimes he would try to buck me, but I never fell off. And sometimes, when I could stop being terrified, we would find our rhythm, we'd canter in union, and the beauty of communicating with the beast would overwhelm me.

- The reason why I'm going back after all these years.


1. Uncommon Grounds, 2. College, 3. poloheel, 4. Heart shaped book