Go Find It

Dick Penn/ / CC BY 2.0

The Elephant House in Edinburgh is one of those places that you instantly like. My first visit there was actually when I had just moved to study in Edinburgh and was looking for a flat. I was supposed to meet with two girls that had rented an apartment right opposite the uni and were looking for 3 more people. As soon as I entered I loved the warm and inviting atmosphere, the staff consisted of young, friendly students and the food was great and pretty cheap too. But the best thing was the old fashioned back room overlooking the Edinburgh castle, which by the way is supposed to have inspired JK Rowling for Hogwarts. She started writing the first book here and since then the lovely place filled with elephant figures and drawings has quickly become a darling among both tourists as well as locals.

By the way doesn’t it look nice from outside?

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Rue Ste-Catherine, Bordeaux / CC BY 2.0

I was looking for new ideas of places to let you know about, folks, and I remembered that a friend of mine spent an entire year in Bordeaux. I’m pretty sure you’ve already heard about this area because of the eponymous wine but you might not know a lot more about it.

Bordeaux is a nice city, the seventh largest metropolitan area in France, according to Wikipedia, full of students and cool places, according to my friends. And it’s for this last part that I thought it could be good to give you inspiration for your next holidays while asking my mate what are the good places to go to…

To make all of you guys happy, I asked her to provide me with a nice place to have a coffee, a nice place to listen to good music as well as a nice place to improve your mind.

Let’s start with the cultural part. If you enjoy contemporary art galleries, it’s worth the trip to go to the Tinbox. The Tinbox is gallery that supports both French and international artists. They also have a studio and, here comes the amazing part, they even have a small mobile gallery that regularly move to various locations.

After having admired nice pieces of art work, what about having a coffee to share your thoughts about it with your friends? If you are in the mood to enjoy a sunny terrace (yes, at this period of the year, it’s still warm in the South East of France), well, this cool café seems to be the right place to chat with your pals as well as the regular customers.

To finish the day, since you were chilling under the sun, I’m sure you will have enough energy to enjoy a visit to Le Cat and jiggle on to The Clash or The Arctic Monkeys guitare riffs. It is apparently the place to go if you are a massive fan of rock music! Very tempting, isn’t it?

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darkensiva / CC By 2.0

Although I’m London based, I’m lucky enough to live with people from other countries such as Portugal and Greece. The house is a big melting pot and I really enjoy it. To us, it is indeed one more way to share and discover things we don’t know in London but also things from our respective countries and cultures.

One of my flatmates has recently come back from holidays in Greece (Athens to be exact) where he heard about a collective of artists and designers called White Box.

What I really like about the White Box concept is its double-objective: first, they have a showroom to both promote craft industry and organise exhibitions by artists and designers from Greece and, then, they try to facilitate the communication between up-and-coming designers and the public. To do so, some of them contribute to the blog Athenwears.

They always have great collection of bags, clothes and jewelleries that you can be sure you will never see on anyone else but you, as the Moldy Peaches used to say.

I really fancy to go to Athens now. Who’s coming?

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