24th of March

This Post is waaaay delayed since we're half way through April but here it is anyways:

Zayra and I finally managed to visit Davidmetnicole - a crowdy but cosy shop in the heart of Surry Hills that hand sources and sells a range of goodies from furniture to wooden type, old school posters to milk bottles, all from the 1900s to 1950s. It's a space, for lovers of all things old, antique & vintage, that's constantly changing and the ambience takes you back in time to somewhere like a Victorian London. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos inside (so I took photos of the outside instead) but there was certainly a lot to awe at on the inside! We also found beautiful old notebooks in sets of 3 (We still have to go back and go get em!) - these books were pub notebooks from London (probably documenting the sales) apparently from the 1930s or was it the 70s damn I can't remember?

Hey Look it's my friend the Manicule ^

We then met up with Iris and went to see Picasso at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and holy smokes it was well worth our $18 buckaroons. We walked for 1.5 hours, until our legs were jelly and stomachs growled, through what seemed like 10 rooms immersing ourselves into the wild imagination of Pablo Picasso. And Wild with a capital W it was. We went back in time witnessing, his 60 or so years of artistic phases, his love affairs and inquired as to whether the seemingly unfinished background of Olga's portrait was originally intentional or unintentional. Intentional or no - we all agreed that we loved it.

We tried to make sense of body shapes in response to titles and managed (mostly Iris) to have an art discussion with a fellow neighbouring stranger as to where the 'figure' or 'mandolin' might be and then awed at his crafts & techniques perplexed as to how his etchings worked. At some point animal cruelty was brought up and I learnt of the cultural but cruel practice of 'Bull-fighting' involving stabbing.

We admired the beautiful series of bull drawings and the way the gentle orange underlayer glowed from beneath the surface of Korea at war. At Picasso's later phases: there was an explosion of colour just as much as there was melancholy.

We struggled fitting into the awkward space between the public and artworks and out of courtesy we held ourselves back from interrupting that invisible barrier between people and artwork but heck when it was empty there'd only be a 1 cm gap separating us from the art (you only get to experience it once, might as well make the most out of it). I can't help but remember about a story my V.A teacher from highschool once told us - about how she got into trouble on an art excursion because she touched Van Gogh's (if memory serves me correctly) Starry Night, and she couldn't have cared any less because she got to touch Starry Night.

After the show, we were feeling awfully hungry and decided to have Mad Mex! It was my first time eating here and I was happy to see that I had options! I got a veggie burrito minus the sour cream and cheese filled with black beans, rice, salsa, corn, grilled veggies, guacamole and hot chilli sauce (it was pretty damn spicy). But my oh my: stomach + tastebuds were very pleased :3. We ended up getting distracted later on with some window shopping... but with our starving wallets to even think about buying anything was probably not at all realistic and ended up making us feel bad with all the temptation (particularly when you're walking around TGV). Here were some delightful finds at Nu + Nan though (Photos via Facebook):

For Shoes the price was pretty decent. Still it's depressing to spend $99 right now.

I might be making excuses but this might be worth the investment. I realise I need a cardigan  for Switzerland.

Notice the colour tone? I'm obssessed with any kind of matured red colour.