#Unfortunately marzipan is NASTY

[bonefall]

i saw this and i immediately went "irl tunnelbuddy !!!!" . no idea what a marzipan is but ur worldbuilding has CHANGED ME

[ID: Wikipedia article of Marzipan Pigs, a confectionery]

Something SUPER similar happened to Troutfur the other day! He came across some kind of old text of a man defending himself from accusation, which translated directly to, "I contain no burglar-ness!!" and he was like "WOW, SERIOUS CLANMEW VIBES FROM THIS ONE"

My partner also keeps seeing villain cats in media and comes to me like, "Is this a warriors?"

So know that I have infected everyone who becomes exposed to me and it's contagious

[foreficfandom]

The Arcana - Cooking For MC (Headcanons)

-- Asra -- 

Life as a street orphan makes cooks of us all. If he wasn’t a child desperately stealing fruit, he was a teenage magician earning coppers to buy scraps from the butcher and bartering for old, bruised squash. He quickly had to learn how to stretch his meager rations as far as he could, and cooking was the way to do it.

He’s come a long way from the one single pot he and Muriel would squat over while hiding away in the docks. Now, he and you happily enjoy a consistent diet of fresh groceries, sometimes he cooks and sometimes you do. 

All his cookery he learned in Vesuvia - pasta, lentils, chickpeas, tomatoes, cumin, basil, ocean seafood. The both of you don’t quite earn enough to splurge on the good cuts of beef, but you never have to worry about going hungry. 

And you don’t have to worry about bland, burnt food, either. Asra can reliably hold his own in the kitchen. He doesn’t exactly follow recipes, just tosses together stuff according to what feels right in his heart. A holdover from the days where he had to improvise all his food. 

There’s more holdovers; he hates tossing away uneaten food, or groceries that have gone bad. He’ll keep the chicken bones to make into a broth for tomorrow. He never peel potatoes or fruit ‘cause the skins contain valuable nutrients. He cringes at people who throw away the heads of fish. The leftover fat in the pan is made into gravy, or pastry frosting, or soap. Occasionally, he and you give away your leftovers to the urchins that hang around the neighborhood. 

When it’s his turn to cook, expect traditional Vesuvian cuisine like flatbreads, hummus, and vegetable soup. Herbs used in the shop are sometimes thrown into the dish, like thyme or myrtle leaves. Asra’s cooking regularly gets to grace your stomach, and it’s very lovely and nice uwu

-- Julian -- 

Everybody who knows Julian holds vehemently that he can’t cook worth a damn. He’s not gonna poison you, but it’s true that he can’t do more than toss various things into a pot and pray that it comes out edible. 

So when he’s forced to cook, everything ends up tasting like the same sort of bland, unspiced mush. And it’s almost always boiled, never roasted or fried. He just seems incapable of not burning anything, so he avoids pancooking ingredients if he can avoid it. And even his soups tend to have burnt residue at the bottom.

Not only that, but traditional Nevevion cuisine ... can be an acquired taste in itself. Like pickled herring covered with beet mayonnaise, cold aspic on toast, and really, really salty fish roe. He grew up eating actually good food cooked by his adopted family, but it’s unfortunately easy to turn a cabbage and potato recipe into nasty gross mush, especially under Julian’s hands. 

He knows he’s shit at cooking, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. Ready-made takeout isn’t always available in their world, so if someone needs to eat, they usually gotta cook. Cue boiled chicken and carrots a-la Julian. At least he added some salt, this time. He blames his Nevevion heritage for lacking an affinity for spices.

With shitty cooking skills come an ability to eat anything. Julian doesn’t turn down a dish if he’s hungry, even if it’s some bullshit. Except for spicy stuff - it’s like the only pain he doesn’t get off on. Just a little jalapeno in his rice will turn his entire face red and give him hiccups.

So say you don’t have time to cook dinner for the both of them tonight, he’d much rather the two of you go eat at an inn than force your divine tongue to be sullied by his dreadful meals. However, he can be taught to cook if you two can find the time, and will eventually get the hang of it. You and Julian in the kitchen, warm and cozy, teaching him how to make a good macaroni? Now that’s an afternoon date in the making.

-- Nadia -- 

Growing up royal meant Nadia never had to cook for herself. To some, it’d be very improper for someone of Nadia’s standing to ever cook, especially in the same kitchen as the servants. But in-between her piano lessons and fencing training and literacy/history/mathematic/public speaking tutoring, she also devoted some personal time in reading up on skills she wouldn’t have been taught - like gardening, jewelry craft, and also cooking and baking.

She had this stint of candy-making when she was a teen, after seeing sugarspun candies in the market that were shaped into different, multi-colored animals and flowers. She would sneak into the kitchen and, with the help of particular cook friend, make candied nuts, meringues, taffies, marzipan. And with the skills she learned making candies, she also learned how to bake and cook various things.

Rarely did she ever get to exercise her cooking skills beyond a mere pastime. She had no one to cook for, nor enough spare time. So very few people knew she bakes a mean butter cashew cake.

One day, she just kinda absentmindedly mentions that she knows how to cook a few things, so you insist she show you, which kinda takes her off-guard and she’s a little nervous, because it’s been a long time since she busted out the ol’ apron, and what if you don’t like what she makes??

She goes to the kitchens and almost bails out, even briefly entertains the thought of passing off the chef’s cooking for her own, but chases that thought from her mind. The palace servants gets to witness the Countess roll up her sleeves with a determined grunt and go ham on some pistachios. 

You wait patiently in the solar (as she instructed), and Nadia brings up a beautiful tray of brightly colored nut-flour sweets with tea. Nadia herself is a little worse for wear, with a dusty face and tangled hair. But she’s thrilled to see you enjoy her cakes. They taste wonderful, doubly so because of the love she put into them.        

-- Muriel -- 

He almost always cooks for himself, ever since his street urchin childhood, and his skills have only improved while living in the woods. He’s no longer scraping mussels off of dock beams to boil in a thin cauldron, he’s hunting 8-feet-tall elk and using every inch of the animal, from boiling the hooves for aspic, to making sausages out of the intestines (the antlers are powdered for their magical properties).

It’s rarer that he ever wants for something he can’t produce himself. He boils his own sea salt, curdles his own cheese, presses his own oil. The problem is that he doesn’t make an effort to make delicious-tasting food. Unlike Julian, who cooks like shit but still enjoys the finer things in life, Muriel has access to super fresh and good-quality ingredients but is ruled by his practicality.

Living in the woods is tough. If the harvest was bad and all Muriel has is last autumn’s rice harvest, then its porridge for the next month. There’s nothing for it; hunting is unreliable even in an expert’s hands, fishing only a tad less so, and a simple wet season or early frost can ruin a garden quicker than a plague. 

Muriel may have said he didn’t need your help around the hut, but your help truly did make a difference when it came to food security. An extra set of hands made for less time and lighter work. Your influence also shined through his cooking; now, he actually does care if something tastes good, because you were eating it with him. Muriel could survive just fine on perpetual pottages, but you deserved better.

Hence, roasts that are actually seasoned, bread with jam and butter, and salt not just for preserving purposes. 

Cooking stopped becoming just a means, but a creative outlet for Muriel. He wanted to treat you, and in turn it became something special for himself, too. 

-- Portia --

The Devorak siblings have one collective braincell, and Portia’s got dibs on it. So she’s got the cooking skills that seemed to have eluded Julian, and she’s very good; the best out of the six. 

As a hand-maiden, cooking isn’t part of her duties, but to even get hired she had to prove she could hold her own in the kitchen on par with royal cuisine. It’s beyond simply being able to replicate a recipe, she knows how to carve game into the right cuts, memorize the seasonal harvests, estimate temperatures by touch, and other complicated kitchen sciences. 

Portia spent her life traveling on ships, so she’s witness many a worldly cuisine and it’s influenced her skills. Nothing impresses a table more than introducing some ‘exotic’ spice and using it right. Her own personal favorites are from all corners of the land. Her dinner spread can consist of Hjalle shrimp pancakes, Galbradian green bean broth, Prakran flatbread, and lamb roasted in an underground oven like they do in Firent.  

Once she has the opportunity to cook (or bake) for you, be prepared for a storm. You’re never gonna have to want for good cuisine again, not if Portia has anything to say about it. Even the little things she makes, like her strawberry jam or workhouse-style bread, taste great. You ask her why she doesn’t pursue a career in cuisine, and she replies that cooking is an outlet for her, not a job. Plus, she’s far from a ‘truly skilled cook’, according to her. That honor’d go to Mazelinka. 

A lot of her budget she’ll happily relinquish to cooking, such as imported spices or the expensive cuts of game. She knows that the smallest difference in quality - such as in the salt, or vinegar, used - can make or break a dish. Her kitchen is always fully stocked with groceries and ingredients. One of her big splurges was investing in an icebox, and before she had you, a magician, in the picture, she was indeed buying ice to keep her meats fresh.

Whether its a wrapped lunch or weekend roast dinner, Portia will always want to spoil you in the best way she knows how; through your stomach. Your waistline might be less happy, but like heck Portia’d take pudge as a negative.

-- Lucio --

He’s been Count for over two decades, but before that he was a rough-and-tumble mercenary. And before that, he grew up in the infamous Scourge Lands, where etching out a living was always a matter that teetered on the brink of a knife.

He had to learn how to live tough. The Scourge Lands are no lush forest like Muriel’s backyard, it’s a flat tundra with limited vegetation and even lesser animals that aren’t more likely to kill you before you kill them. The entire clan’s been living off of bitter turnips for weeks, but finally a family of boars are scouted. Now you just have to take down a bear-sized boar while circling around five others who all want to gore you. 

Even cooking can be a struggle. Life as a mercenary meant trying to strike fires on cold, damp wood in a freezing drizzle, and keeping it lit long enough to roast the skinny fish you managed to spear. It meant knowing which plants were edible and which caused three nights of stomach pains, and also being willing to resort to digging up grubs when you’re really on the brink of starvation.

So does he know how to cook? Yeah, he can roast meat over a fire and know when its safe from pathogens, but other than that he’s lost. He was so happy to finally have cooks and servants to serve him entire banquets. Never did he learn (nor want to learn) how to bake bread, or fry potatoes, nevermind suckling pig or creme brulee. 

If come a time where you and Lucio are away from the precious palace kitchens, he’ll rely on his wallet to buy the two of you a nice meal. If the two of you are lost in the wilderness, don’t worry, Lucio to the rescue and you can trust him to forage something, and grill it on a hot rock. No salt, though. Not even water to wash it down, if you’re really unlucky.

Still, it’s kinda a surprise to eat Lucio’s emergency field cooking, because it’s not awful. The best anyone can do in the circumstance, even. Make sure to tell him that, he’s always fishing for compliments. 

[opepin]

august: week one

july31: lol this morning. i woke up at like 7 am or something and kevin decided to wake up at 9 am or 10 am? i woke up, brushed, did whatever i could with my 2g data connection (btw, i couldn’t receive texts or anything but i got my data to work after changing the apn -- it was frustrating dealing with that the first day we got here), and i curled my hair for fun lol. then i watched ‘somm’ until kevin got up. i was hangry by then so he got ready and we went to the bakery again. we overshot how much we were going to eat. i also accidentally got a marzipan pastry...i hate marzipan... it looked like soft bread coated with cinnamon sugar D: we also got their infamous strawberry creme chocolate tart. it was good, but too much. kevin got a cinnamon strudel, a lemon tart, and a thai curry baguette because he was craving the baguettes since last night. :P we went back to the airbnb because i was starting to feel nauseous... we stayed there for like an hour so i could recover. i took tums and gasx and laid in bed massaging my stomach. i manned up and felt a bit better so we walked to glyptoteket, the fine arts museum, only to find out it was closed. T_T i planned it for yesterday so when we slept all day on the first day, our schedule got screwed up :( it also happened to pour on our way there -__-” right next to it was tivoli, the amusement park, but we decided not to go because of the rain and we just didn’t feel like it at this point. we decided to forge on and go to rosenborg castle to see the garden and/or go to the port for a boat ride.

i got upset at these turn of events and then some nasty old guys in a van kept looking at me like a piece of meat and kevin didn’t shield me or anything so i got frustrated at him. my legs were also SO SO SO itchy because my leggings were drying from the rain and it made my legs cold and my skin and body did not like it one bit. so we walked upset and in silence. we talked for a bit and then stopped. we decided to sit on the boat ride because of my legs and everything was fine after that. i bought kevin a hot dog and we got two bottles of water for $14...rip off LOL. the hot dogs here have a thicker casing but i think i like it. they also look hella phallic...which is weird haha. the sun came out again and it got real nice so the boat ride was a perfect choice. there was a lot of interesting architecture to see. kevin got hungry after so we walked over to the street food vendor area across the bridge. we got duck fat fries and the highlight of that was the creme fraiche dipping sauce. then we went inside to find the rest of the vendors. it was very much like what you would find in america (not so much like outside carts). oh, kevin also bought a smoothie from one of the outside carts and the guy just gave him one that was sitting there LOL. he was so put off by that. we also got a snow cone, which turned out to be a drink with a ton of ice in it LOLOLOL. kevin stopped picking what to eat after that.

we ended up getting a barbecue pulled pork burger with curly fries. mmm. kevin made a good point to say that if this was the best thing we ate here so far, then copenhagen isn’t a good place to get food because america does barbecue even better, which is pretty true of what we experienced. that burger was hella good. after that, kevin wanted to go back and rest so we walked back and did just that. i think i ended up falling asleep for 30 minutes to an hour again and then we headed out to the church right behind our airbnb with one of the best views of copenhagen. it didn’t strike me that we were going to be outside above the ground on a really steep staircase until we were actually doing it. kevin was nervous right when we got in line and i didn’t get it LOL. well, we walked up some wooden steps and then we reached the metal steps outside and kevin was freaking out on the inside. he had to let people go in front of us LOLOL. we made it to the top and i took pictures. i wasn’t as scared as kevin but the winds didn’t help either. so we took pictures quickly and took our time going down. it was a great experience together. <3 haha.

we walked to illum, a department store, to see if i could nab some danish fashion styles before leaving tomorrow. everything is so nice and minimalistic but sooooo expensive. i left without getting anything. we didn’t go to the rosenborg castle or the aquarium or the round tower again like we planned initially, but we didn’t mind. from shopping, we went straight to goomi and had rice for the first time in a few days. we’re rice addicts. i got three cup chicken and kevin got some pork dish. we both had two bowls of rice (they were super tiny bowls). we were really happy after that meal. we called it a day after and then went back to the airbnb, packed, and went to sleep sort of early. we had a somewhat early flight tomorrow. copenhagen was overall okay for us. we’re not in love with it. the colorful houses, the quaint aesthetic of the area, and the fact that it is pretty small made it a nice place to stay for 2-3 days. i think we hit most of the tourist spots and got to walk around most of copenhagen. we were ready to head to stockholm though.

01: we handled airport things way better this time. we decided not to go to the bakery for food and get food at the airport. there were a lot more people than i had anticipated but we got there pretty early. we checked in our bags, went through security, and then got a nice breakfast place that consisted of hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, and bacon. mmm. i got a green tea latte with soy milk because they did not have coconut milk at this starbucks. then we headed to our gate and abused the wifi LOL. i was so happy to have fast internet. i caught up on youtube videos and etc. so our flight kept getting delayed for some reason... but kevin and i were super chill and didn’t mind. i think we finally boarded at like 12 pm or something only to get moved out of the plane because there were technical errors. some people were really pissed because they were flying back home to the states. then some really nice guy told me that we will get compensated around 300 euros for the delay :O our flight got pushed from 10 am to 4 pm or something like that. so then kevin and i just squatted at the airport. we also got like $20 food vouchers and we found a yo sushi in the airport so we ate there! the fried rice at yo sushi is always bomb. we tried a mango crab roll that was delicious too. we got full pretty quickly.

it was nice being at the airport because they had a lot of shopping areas and i could keep on the search for some danish fashion items. so every now and then, kevin and i would walk to the stores and look. i ended up buying a cup of black tea while waiting and then i went back to get a tin of it. i looked at some clothes from noa noa, but was turned off by how many older women were looking at the sale rack with me T__T is my fashion that dated? LOL. we also surprisingly got chocolate-coated licorice because it was not bad??? haha. we now have a kind-of inside joke about this burberry coat we saw at illum. it looked so cool like an anime character would wear it with his dual swords and etc. it was a guy’s jacket so i showed kevin and he was really interested until we realized we were in burberry and he looked at the $1000 price tag. LULZ. we found a burberry here but the jacket was not there. :P

eventually, we boarded the flight with no problems and then i started watching the other ‘somm’ documentary i downloaded. i finished the first one, which was really interesting because it was about becoming a master sommelier and this one was the process of making wine. kevin ko’d on the flight. when we finally arrived in stockholm, we hit some snags in paying too much for an arlanda express ticket and finding the security box in central station containing our airbnb keys. we made it through and then walked 15 minutes to the apartment. this time, our airbnb was a private apartment and it had wifi. on the walk there, we noticed a lot of thai and japanese restaurants. the weather was beautiful -- unfortunate because we spent the entire day at the airport. the airbnb we stayed at is BEAUTIFUL. her apartment is decorated so nicely T__T the fridge blended in with the cabinets, she had a ton of candles, and the place was just nice and homey with a modern vibe. she also bought us milk, eggs, and bread and we could use her pantry and kitchen.

we unpacked and i let kevin pick a restaurant. he went on yelp and found this restaurant not too far of a walk called, ‘gro.’ so we walked there and noticed it was really tiny and we awkwardly stood by the door to see if we could get seated. we did eventually and then we looked at the menu and i found out that this place had two 4-course menus: one for meat eaters and one for vegetarians that cost $60 each... awks... i got mad at kevin for a bit for putting us in this situation but i calmed down and when he realized what i did, we figured it out. we ended up splitting the meat eater menu after asking and then declined wine. we both felt so ashamed and disrespectful. i looked up the yelp and kevin had only read one of them saying it was like $30-40 for a meal... lol that was a lie. i dug deeper and read that they handpick their wine so we ended up getting two glasses of wine. lol, we just felt so bad and out of place but we were trying to make the most of it. what’s even worse is that they gave us basically full sized portions of everything Dx we only shared one dish that was probably supposed to be smaller. ugh. they were being waay too nice to us and we felt even worse for that haha...

so, we had vegetable spaghetti (x2), cod stomach (x1), rooster (x1), rhubarb sorbet with licorice sprinkled on top (x2), and sorbet (x2). for the price of $60, that was way too much in our opinion because we were splitting it. the food was great but we weren’t looking for expensive food in the first place lol. oh, the real kicker is that the two chefs along with the server was giving us the food and explaining what it is. we were a few feet away from the kitchen and the chefs making the food to order x__x; one of them also mentioned that today was their first day of summer service so their english was a bit rusty. what. what did we get ourselves into LOL. we paid 75% of what two meals were supposed to be and then walked back to the airbnb. what a funny experience. kevin streamed the dota tournament for the rest of the night, showered with the super nice waterfall shower head, and then went to sleep at like 1 am?

02: we woke up and kevin made scrambled eggs with toast and butter for breakfast. the bread she got us toasted up so nicely. i love that bread. her toaster and tea kettle were so retro but did their jobs perfectly. i love that toaster. anyway, we ate and then walked over to stockholm’s city hall :) the moment we saw the skyline, we fell in love with stockholm. the weather was pretty nice too. stockholm is so beautiful with water, greenery, castles, and modern architecture everywhere. it’s perfect. walking past the arches of city hall to the lawn area took my breath away. it was gorgeous. we took lots of pictures and then kevin got a snow globe from the gift shop. i was feeling bleh because kevin is really bad at taking pictures so i never really ask because i have really high expectations for pictures of myself LOL. so he took pictures of me and i was disappointed about it, but also the fact that i don’t know how to pose for pictures anymore and i think i look pretty bad when i’m not the one taking the picture of myself / selfies. idk. sigh. i apologized to him and explained to him and he said he’ll try better and i said that i’ll try to be more understanding.

after city hall, we walked to the royal palace. as we were walking, we were trying to compare stockholm to a city in the states. i think we finally came to agreement that it’s a cleaner san francisco, which is probably why i love it so much. there are a bunch of inclines everywhere but the city is still larger than sf. there’s so much to see and so many directions to walk in ahha. well, we found out that there were 4 museums inside the palace itself and we started with the treasury and saw some real crowns, orbs, and scepters. i bought a small crown pin for my book bag. then we saw the royal apartments and stopped by the lunch plaza for a slice of lemon cheesecake and the most authentic freshly squeezed orange juice i’ve ever had in my life. then i walked around trying to find the bathroom and then kevin and i walked through the tre kronor museum (not that interesting -- history and architecture of the old building vs new) and also stopped by the antiquities section. after that, we looped back to the gift shop and spent a good amount of time there. i got some crown money clips as souvenirs and then we headed into old town!

there were so many cute small shops, artist galleries, and cafes. there were a lot of narrow cobblestoned walkways and colorful houses. i knew we made it to stortorget when we saw a man playing the piano beautifully and a ton of seats available to sit and listen to him. stortorget is the middle of old town where there is always something happening. :) we walked a bit more, took more pictures, and then kevin was getting hungry so we walked all the way to a restaurant called, ‘meatballs for the people.’ we got sat at the bar right away and then got some lingonberry juice and water. mmmm, the juice was so refreshing and delicious. it’s sweeter than cranberry juice but reminds me a lot of it. we both ordered deluxe swedish meatballs. i got pork and beef and kevin got deer meat. the deer meat had a lot of texture to it that i liked. this meal was flipping delicious. this was my favorite meal in stockholm. we got the buttery mashed potatoes and actual lingonberries. i was stuffed. kevin kept joking that we should eat there again for dinner...

we ended the day by going to monteliusvagen, the best place to get a view of the entire city. it was quite a walk but stockholm is beautiful so we didn’t mind at all. there was this one rain cloud that kept following us though? LOL it was really funny. we outran it at one point and it kept coming back to us... when it did, it just annoyingly drizzled instead of actually raining. xD we took some twists and turns and went up some hills but when we got there, it was totally worth it. we called it a day after because we wanted to go grocery shopping. we stopped at ‘cheesecake palace’ because kevin needed to use the bathroom. he got a slice of key lime cheesecake while i went and peed. i needed to pee first but kevin went ahead and went first so i was a bit upset at him x__x but we figured it out as we got to the bus stop. it started to rain...finally... and then we went into the grocery store, coop. we were confused because we only saw packaged goods like a walgreens... so we bought some toothpaste and i got disposable razors and walked back to the apartment. kevin was confused so he looked the store up on yelp and it was definitely a grocery store. so we rested for a bit and then went back and there was definitely a grocery store, except it was downstairs and all of the sale pots and plants blocked our view of the escalator... we bought some red and yellow peppers, potatoes (i kept saying tomatoes LOL), tomatoes, and once we decoded the labels, chicken thighs. i bought some strawberry cheesecake oreos, a marabou oreo chocolate bar, and some polly’s chocolate pieces. we also got sour cream and onion waffle chips.

the self-checkout system here is wonderful. you have a machine to weigh and label your produce. you just scan the stuff, and then you scan the receipt to exit if you used self-check out. it’s so high tech! anyway, i just started snacking like crazy when we got back. i felt bad but i was like meh at the same time. kevin watched some dota games, i was online watching videos, going on snapchat and instagram too. kevin decided to cook really late so we split one chicken thigh (they were tiny) and then went to sleep at like 1 or 2 am.

03: i think we left the house at 12 pm after eating tomatoes and eggs with toast and butter. i love this breakfast lol. we walked to the stockholm public library; the library was kind of underwhelmingly small, but it had the cool circular bookshelf alignment going on. then we walked over to the spelmuseum, the one museum here that i really wanted to go to! the spelmuseum is a gaming museum so i was so excited to bring kevin here. it’s small and tucked away, but when you enter, there is a projection on the wall of space invaders that you can play along with some images of the creators. they display all of the old gaming devices and had a few games to play. we played pacman, metal slug, the boxing game, street fighter, and this tennis game. lol i beat kevin in the tennis game so badly at first but then he beat me in the next one because i kept holding the left direction button for some reason ahahah. we tried playing breath of the wild but kept killing ourselves from falling and then we played this really fun two player game similar to metal slug, but i don’t remember what it was called... kevin played super mario 64 and they also had my warioware game to play and pokemon sun! we spent like 2-3 hours there ofc. kevin had a lot of fun. we do wish it was bigger though. kevin got a cute af yoshi mug there and we got a pixel art kit of snorlax too. jkdfnskd fave museum in stockholm. kevin went to use the washroom so i played a ton of space invaders while waiting. i was so close to beating the high score but i kept losing :( merp merp.

we walked to birger jarl’s passage, which was pretty close by. it was a pretty short passage lol but it was fancy af. it’s a passage that leads to all of the name brand stores like gucci, louis vuitton, etc. but the whole street is shopping central. we stopped by & other stories to see if they had the suede kitten heel pump ingrid recently showed on her youtube channel. kitten heels are definitely something i will wear from now on due to my feet. they didn’t have it but i shopped around and decided not to get anything because the whole tax refund process is too difficult and all the stuff was pretty expensive. plus, i could buy online and ship to the states. we stopped by a chain called, ‘joe and the juice’ to get a bite to eat. we’ve seen this chain all over copenhagen and stockholm and i regret that we didn’t find it sooner?! their juices are delicious and so are their sandwiches. we got the immunity and sex me up juice and two of the joe’s sandwiches. their sandwiches are on harder and thinner pieces of bread but it’s so good. i’m totally in love with this chain and there’s only one in new york in the states. lol. anyway, we walked over to the bus stop to get to skansen open air zoo~

it was a short and nice bus ride. we got there at around 4 pm so we were just in time to see a few of the old town houses. we saw a glassmaker, furniture maker, baker, and etc. it was just ok. maybe it’s livelier when it’s not closing time? after walking around the village (workers here show how swedish people lived 100 years ago so it’s like a small town environment), we went straight to the zoo. we saw elk, brown bears (!!!), reindeer, a really fat seal (LOL), wolves (!!!), and a wolverine (didn’t know these existed). we didn’t pay for the aquarium / amphibians so after that, we went to the amusement park area where there were 2 different drops and one seat twirler that moved up into the sky the highest (higher than the drop). kevin and i weren’t about it so we left through the turnstiles; this is where i got injured lol. it was a very wide turnstile so i thought kevin would wait for me to come in and then push, but i thought wrong and so my arm got squished and so did my boob. mmm, my arm is now bruised lol. kevin was really apologetic though x_x; we went into the museum shop and didn’t find anything so we took a couple buses to get back to the apartment. we would come back to see king’s garden and strandvagen later in the day.

we got back right in time for dinner. kevin reheated the chicken and made peppers with roasted potatoes. it was a delicious home-cooked meal :) i think we really needed a break from buying food. we ended up not going out. i wasn’t heart broken or anything though because we can always come back! also, the king’s garden is super large and just a meeting place / park and strandvagen is a street with a bunch of fancy houses overlooking the water. so, i didn’t mind. i think my stomach also got super bloated so staying in was the best option. i was full and happy and we had wifi. again, we went to sleep at like 1 or 2 am.

04: today was the final full day we had in stockholm and we took it super easy. lol i think we left the apartment at 1 pm or something to hop on the train to get to telefonplan. yes, that is an area in stockholm... we walked over to the climbing gym, klattercentret, that nluu told kevin about and went in. there was a nice small vegan cafe there and a ton of seating. i spent some time taking pictures of kevin and then i just chilled on my phone or kevin’s laptop. the gym area was filled with intimidating people so i just chilled out while kevin climbed. he said the closer you got to the rocks, the more it smelled like feet LOL. the air away from the rocks didn’t stink at all though. there were a ton of babies here tooo~ so cute. i got the cheapest tea here for 20 sek. kevin got the guys some souvenirs from here after climbing. then we took the train home. we could have gone to skyview, but after reading more reviews and stuff, it didn’t seem worth it. people said the view from the place we went on the first day had a better view. it is the world’s largest spherical place though... so maybe we’ll see it when we come back (: haha.

this is the part when kevin and i both doze off on the bus and we miss our stop so we have to take a bus back lol. the signage to transfer buses is not very clear here... we had to look for a connecting bus and only found it when we saw the bus stop at the location so we missed the first one. oh wells. haha. it’s a good thing the buses are always on time here and the wait for them is never long. kevin showered and i called (i did pay 20 cents for 1 minute) to make sure this thai massage place had openings today. we walked on over to ‘samruai thai massage’ (it was super close by) and got a massage right away. lol these ladies saw my boobs and massaged super closely to my vagina, but they were nice and didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. this massage overall was bomb. she massaged my arms like they have never been massaged before. i didn’t even know i had tiny tiny muscles like that all over my body. my neck has been really tight this whole trip so sometimes i would get headaches from looking at my phone or ipad so this helped a lot. we left very refreshed, relaxed, and hungry.

i found a nearby japanese place called, ‘matsu’ and their prices were cheaper than most restaurants here. kevin and i thought we were gonna get small af portions so we ordered a dragon roll, gyoza, yakiniku, and yakisoba. lol, when our yakiniku and yakisoba came out, we knew we over-ordered. LOL. it was so delicious though. we just sucked up all the delicious rice / noodles and beef. then our dragon roll came, and these were the biggest rolls i have ever seen in my life. we devoured all of that first and then came the gyoza -- there were 10 of them. they must have thought we were fat asses. we managed to finish the gyoza, roll, and more than half of each entree. then we took it home and kevin finished his yakisoba. i tried finishing my yakiniku but ended up throwing it away in the morning. our stomaches were not happy after stuffing ourselves too much. i spent the rest of the night gassy, bloated, and a bit nauseous tbh. i ate waaay too much. we also slept at like 1 am, which was waaay too late for our flight tomorrow morning at 8 am.

05: needless to say, we were dead in the morning. we packed everything up last night and made sure we didn’t leave anything in the morning. we woke up at 5:30 am... kevin called an uber because the bus would have taken another 10 minutes to come, and when the guy dropped us off, he laughed at kevin for closing the door in my face LOL. he joked that kevin wasn’t awake yet in swedish / poor english. :P we hopped onto the arlanda express only to sit with talkative af people -__-” we were tired and not having it. we were thankful when we got to the airport stop. there was a bit of a wait to check in and everything but we made it and stopped by ‘joe & the juice’ right away. kevin got immunity and we both got sandwiches. i wanted their granola / acai bowl but they were out. :( after eating, we used the bathroom and then boarded right away. i freaked out a bit because we were supposed to start boarding at 7:30 am but kevin was still in the bathroom, i think. he apparently had no wifi in the bathroom so i didn’t know where he was. luckily, he got out right after and boarding didn’t start yet. 

we got on the flight and we just tried sleeping the entire 3-hour flight. i think we managed to get in a good 2 hours at least. we got to iceland and then really needed to pee. kevin got pulled into a random security check LOL so i waited at first and then i had to go so i went downstairs to use the bathroom and met him near the gate. kevin has taken a liking to hot dogs so he got one for second breakfast, i got an english breakfast bowl from ‘mathus’, and we got a chicken baguette for the flight. again, the lines were crazy and we had to board via the tarmac so the process was a bit slow. kevin ate his hot dog in line and we finished the english breakfast bowl together. i really like the beans! there were also sausages, an egg, and bacon in there too. mmm, it was very filling. we both ko’d at the beginning of the flight for like 30 minutes and then kevin started watching ‘skyfall 007′ and i found a romantic movie called, ‘flipped.’ i’m glad i watched it because it was a pretty great movie. i really enjoyed it. it’s about a girl who falls in love with a kid who moved into her neighborhood in 2nd grade and what happens when she ‘flips’ and doesn’t like him anymore. it was a really cute and heartfelt movie. there’s a lot more than cliche love to this movie.

kevin basically watched his movie the entirety of the flight and said it wasn’t worth it LOL. he started playing pokemon while watching too. i watched ‘slumdog millionaire’ next. i actually have not seen the movie until now. i think it was pretty intense and great but the ending kind of cheapened the story. it didn’t really build up to anything. by that time, we had 20 minutes to land. my stomach wasn’t feeling so great after such a long flight and beans, but we made it. it was my first time going through customs and filling out the form before landing too. it was an easy process to go through because we didn’t bring in any fresh produce and stuff. we finally got our luggage and waited for the silver line~ the t took forever but we finally got home at like 2:30 pm, ordered burgers from kkatie’s burgers, showered, and picked up our food. it was pretty humid in boston and a bit rainy. i guess we bring the rain everywhere we go ;( after stuffing ourselves with fries and burgers, kevin drove us to spectacles where i got to pick up my glasses. it was really busy today so paul just adjusted my glasses for me and then sent me off.

we stoppped by roche bros to get fruit and then went back home to rest and unpack. i had to do some cleaning because my tea tree oil bursted in my bag :( but other than that, i just put everything in the laundry and put away our food stuff and souvenirs. i spent the rest of the evening digesting the food and looking into & other stories, uniqlo, and thredup. after seeing how everyone dressed in copenhagen and stockholm, i want to revamp my wardrobe. i also love my new glasses and how they look on me. there is no chromatic abberation and i see perfectly through them. so i have an updated accessory that fits my face and i love to wear. anyway, i purchased two pairs of wide ankle pants from uniqlo and started filling up my thredup basket. i’m not sure if i should go ahead and buy more clothes or just try to work with what i have right now. :/ hmmm. i talked with daniel for a bit and then worked on paying back kevin for travel stuff and paying students loans and documenting that in my spreadsheet. kevin and i both ko’d at around 11:30 pm because we were tired af. i can’t believe we stayed up that long tbh. i only got like 5 hours of sleep or so. my stomach wasn’t feeling so great either so i took meds and then went to sleep.

[END COPENHAGEN / STOCKHOLM VACATION ]

06: we woke up at 8 am and stayed in bed until 9 am. then we had breakfast and i started updating my tumblr. not sure if i should buy from thredup yet, but i’m still thinking about it. kevin gamed a bit after breakfast and then we meal planned around noon. it’s weird being back home to the normal routine. my stomach is feeling better but not 100% healed. we went grocery shopping and then cleaned the fridge, put away the luggage, did laundry, and i kept thinking about thredup lol. i managed to figure out with the help of friends and kevin, what to buy. i finally bought my first thredup box :) then i did some more internet errands and packed for tomorrow. kevin went to cook and i folded the clothes and then i did a 15 minute low-impact workout before eating. after digesting for a bit, i did a 20 minute low-impact workout and then went to shower. i was really tired... i was falling asleep during my workout even though it was only 10 pm. i watched some youtube videos before going to sleep at like 11:30 pm. zzzz. it was a very uneventful but well-needed rest day.