Published by Melina on 6th October 2009 in social
Pixelthing / CC BY-SA 2.0
As you probably know I was in Sweden for my Holidays a couple of weeks ago. One of my favourite things to do when there is to “fika”. That basically means hanging out in a cafe with one or several friends for ages, having a coffee or tea and drinking it insanely slowly whilst nibbling on something sweet. I love that, I love “fika” and I’m a bit sad that this concept doesn’t seem to exist here in the UK the same way it does in Sweden. Naturally I spent my holidays doing “fika” in different cafes and at different friend’s houses.
In Stockholm I have a few favourite cafés that I got to regularly. There’s thousands of cafés in each and every corner of Stockholm and I’ve tried quite a few but for different reasons I have some regulars.
One of them is Café tubby which I already written a post about, then there’s Bönor och Bakat (’Beans and Baked’) which has the best tasting blueberry pie a girl (or a guy) can wish for. It’s also very cheap for being a café in Stockholm. The atmosphere is okay and on the walls you can find graffiti inspired art work for sale. You can see a lot of young people here and if you’re lucky you can catch the sofa to hang out on.
One of my oldest and favourite cafés is Choklad koppen (’Cup of chocolate’). It’s a gay friendly cafe in beautiful Old town which is the oldest part of Stockholm. It’s quite small so it’s best to go there when it’s warm enough to sit on their terrace. Luckily you can borrow a blanket from them so you can sit outside for quite a long time during the year. I love the historic view, the great chocolate cake and their yummy sandwiches. Also, the staff are usually really sweet.
My newest addition is Cafe Mineur which is hidden in a cellar in Old town (as the previous one). What I like the most about this place is the interior which is odd bits and bobs from different decades. They match huge sofas with 50’s armchairs and narrow sewing tables. Nothing is the same, but it matches just perfect. It looks like a vintage furniture store…
Do you know of any good coffee places around London, please let me know and I’ll teach all my English friends how to do “fika” 
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Published by Camille on 1st October 2009 in design, music, social
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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Published by Sergi on 20th August 2009 in social
joiseyshowaa / CC BY-SA 2.0
Next week some of my friends are going to Amsterdam (at the moment they are visiting me in London). It’s not the first time they’re going there, so they know several places to visit and to party at. However, they would like to discover more and other cooler places than the ones they already know.
Like me, they don’t like to use conventional tourist guides when they travel, so I advised them to take a look at the go find it map.
While we were browsing the map we quickly found lots of cool stuff. As they’re only staying in Amsterdam for a short while they wrote a list with several places to visit. Here’s the list:
Do you have any other suggestion for them? Please share them on the comments, they’ll really appreciate it!
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“Fika” in Stockholm
