Five Budget Friendly Eating Ideas in Italy || EATALY Vol. 1

Ciao! Over the past two weeks, I’ve been on a trip to Italy. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to share everything I did with you guys! With Italy being one of the most popular travel destinations in the world, it means that you will be ‘graced’ with high hotel prices, expensive mediocre food and crowds (quite depressing in’t). That being said, with the help of hostel hosts, I have put together a list of 5 budget-friendly meal ideas that might help you plan for your trip to Italy. Check them out:

Melbourne getaway

Greetings from Australia! Coming into the Brisbane winters, there aren’t a lot of rainy days but luckily there’s always Melbourne winters! I was fortunate to be down at Melbourne recently on an overcast and slightly dreary weekend. Perfect for shopping. 

We made our way to the Chadstone Shopping Centre located at Malvern East, Victoria; one of the biggest shopping centres in Australia to peruse the local goods. 

First stop: the Aldi Australia Special Buys section for a pair of $17 gumboots (to be featured in another post). We then marvelled our way through the rest of the shopping centre, feeling like we were in a futuristic city completely cut off from earth. We passed by the Legoland Discovery Centre, Zara, Uniqlo and stopped by at the newly renovated Apple Store, complete with it’s own mini forest. Chadstone Shopping Centre is a full day, so be prepared ladies. 

Sadly, I purchased nothing further as I had a 7kg limit to my flight home.

The next day we headed to the South Melbourne Market located at the corner of Coventry and Cecil Streets, South Melbourne, to satisfy my deep love of markets. We found pastries galore including things I had never seen before like laksa croissants and pandan croissants. 

South Melbourne Market is great place to go eat some breakfast (proceed to the Food Hall), to buy fresh produce and to just check out random knick-knacks The South Melbourne Market is open Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and the best way to get there from the city is to catch the tram (via tram line 1 from Stop 10 at Bourke Street Mall/Swanston Street, towards Melbourne Beach). 

(For those interested getting around in Melbourne and exploring further places, I’ll do a blog post dedicated to this later.)

Shortly after we headed back to Melbourne CBD (on the same tram line), to walk around Melbourne Central where I had been awaiting eagerly for the renowned lobster ramen. That’s right, lobster ramen. To be found at Unabara Lobster & Oyster Bar. You will never be short of great food in Melbourne. 

As to whether I’d recommend it to others, I would say that I much preferred the complimentary dessert (which comes free when you review the restaurant on Zomata and write 140 characters). 

Hoping those in balmy, warmer weathers are nicely refreshed and those who are stuck in cooler weathers (like me) are snuggled up. 

Love from J. 

Be Jolie series Vol. 1 || General Favourites

Happy 2k16, Everyone!! New year, new beginning. It's that time of the year where we all have the excuse to start fresh again. New year's resolutions always give us some hope and aspiration to improve from the previous year. As a person that LOVES to make fresh starts, I've made some goals for the new year to keep me motivated.

With that being said, I'm starting a new series called Be Jolie! The word 'jolie/jolly' has two meanings: one, (the obvious) to be happy, and two, to be pretty (in french). I relate closely to the idea that beauty and happiness come hand in hand, and it is bidirectional. 

As means to be happy, feeling pretty and confident. This series will include different elements/or things I do to invigorate happiness and beauty, like mental wellness, fitness, beauty, makeup etc. I'm really excited for this series, so please stay tuned for it. 

To kick start my new series, I thought I would share with you some recent favourites I had discovered/rediscovered lately.

Weekend Explorer

Living in the city can sometimes be quite overwhelming, especially when I have to travel daily on crowded public transport. It's very common to want to stay home and just chill on my day-offs. Fortunately, a friend came back to Hong Kong and we met up on a date. She had always been the one that would convince me to venture out and be spontaneous. 

So under her influence, we decided to go for a picnic at Repulse Bay, a beach that had recently been developed into the new 'it' place. To my surprise, it was a lot more stylish and hip than I had expected. There was a new mall, The Pulse, with the daintiest restaurants, cafes and cupcake shops you would ever had imagined. 

Croatia Vlog 2015 | Part 1 | Voyage Diaries

My second attempt to vlog my trip to Croatia. I decided to put this vlog into two parts since I've been to quite a lot of places, one vlog would be WAY too long.