Flowers and cute cats and having my windows cleaned. Springtime!
/anna
Shanghai is one of the busiest places I have been and yet… on The Bund a sunny day in December one can feel very free and on to new adventures!
/anna
This is what Christmas looks like in my family. Of course this is last year’s tree since we wait until Christmas Eve to light the candles. But it will be just as beautiful and just as cosy.
Merry Christmas to all!
/anna
In the middle of China, in the province of Sichuan you find the city of Chengdu. And in the northern part of Chengdu is the Panda Base. I was at the Panda Base a couple of weeks ago to meet pandas, pandas and pandas! I met plenty and they were just as cute as I had hoped for. Panda babies are cute when sleeping and when playing. Teenage pandas are cute when eating and stealing food from their classmates. Adult pandas are cute when sleeping up in trees after breakfast. My sister and I spent more than six hours at Panda Base – completely absorbed by these chubby loungers.
Of course I took one zillion photos and I will probably share every now and again here on the blog, but to begin with here is a small series of three from the teenage enclosure.
“That’s good, yes, just stay there…”
“Wtf?”
“Oh well…”
My warmest recommendations. Chengdu Panda Base is worth all your travel, trouble, money and the hustler taxi drivers.
/anna
Christmas fun at my sister’s. We are making crullers – very traditional Danish Christmas pastries – but not something we usually do in my family. They were funny doing, and oh, they are good!
Now last episode of Homeland. Weeeee.
/anna
There comes a time in every woman’s life when asking your friends to move for you, paying them by means of pizza and beer just doesn’t cut it. And moving to the 5th floor does pose some challenges. One of them being…moving to the 5th floor. So early on I decided to pay my way out of it.
I hired these guys who turned out to be fearless not to say reckless.
Argh!
They preferred this to carrying all my stuff up the stairs. Which I can relate to if it wasn’t because of the minor detail of RISKING YOUR LIFE!
Anyways. They survived. And so did I. And my stuff.
/anna
Let’s celebrate the 150th photo of the week and my return to the blog with a seal!
I met this harbour seal at the northernmost tip of Denmark, Grenen, north of the town of Skagen a couple of weeks ago. I was there for the museum and took an early morning walk before entering. You can drive almost all the way there but the last kilometer or so you have to walk on the beach and then you get to the spit where the North Sea and Kattegat meet. I had heard about seals in this area and was hoping for one. I got five! Four of them together and then this solitary one a bit further ahead. And it was not afraid of anything – least of all me. I could get as close as a meter and then it barked a bit to make me understand “no touching”. It was fascinating and look how cute!
/anna
In three days I will get the keys for my new apartment. It’s on the top floor with angled walls and moving from an apartment on the ground floor I look forward to all that light a 5th floor apartment offers.
I love a good diy project so I have been checking out colours and also some wallpaper. The apartment has more rooms than I am used to so there is space for a bit of craziness. Like these monkeys from Cole & Son.
I am considering the paper for my dining room and since the furniture is all in black I think it is necessary with some fun and games. We’ll see if I have the courage to do it!
Other from that I have been trying out different colours from Farrow & Ball. They make beautiful paints inspired by traditional colour schemes and the quality seems top notch. You can buy small sample pots like these:
I got Green Smoke, Cooking Apple Green, Hague Blue, French Gray, Mouse’s Back and Charleston Gray. I have been looking for a warm grey for my office/library (yes…I will have that – yay!) and Charleston Gray seems to match both my dark blue armchairs and my mahogany chest of drawers . I simply painted the colours on thick paper so that I can move them around and also take them to the new place.
From the left: Charleston Gray, French Gray, Mouse’s Back, Hague Blue, Green Smoke, and Cooking Apple Green.
I am fascinated by the very dark Hague Blue and considering it for the hall. Could be beautiful with some focused light on gold framed pictures on that blue.
Oh, I love projects and dreaming about projects!
/anna
On the 1st of April last year it was announced that Giro d’Italia would begin in Denmark in 2012. Of course we all took it as an April fools’ joke. But no joke as I established myself yesterday when I went all the way to the city of Herning to watch the time trial prologue of the race. Never has so much Italian been spoken in those parts and never have so many Danish men and boys worn so much pink.
These guys focused more on beer than pink but their enthusiasm was unambiguous when they rooted for both riders and fellow cycling fans. Like me and my family passing by…
Today the race goes the farthest North any of the large races have ever gone and even though I think it is slightly, well… off, a lot of Danes are having a lot of fun seeing their cycling heroes up close. So hooray for the Giro!
/anna
I had a wonderful experience on Saturday when I witnessed a performance of Hamlet with the weird ensemble The Tiger Lillies. The text was cut down to a minimum and replaced by physical action and music. It was very good. And you can still go if you are in Copenhagen – they play until the 12 May at Republique. My warmest recommendations.
The Tiger Lillies are new to me but it’s wonderful to have discovered them. So now I will share with you too! This is from their adaptation of the book Der Struwwelpeter so… burning children and such…
Look, look, look:
/anna
Annina Teatime 