Europe trip Part III (Brussels, Belgium)

I think the most surprising part of my trip was Brussels. I didn't imagine that I would be as charmed by it as I was. I guess where good beer dwells, one can do no wrong!

 We stayed in a guesthouse called Carmelite, and we loved the owner Pascal. He was just the most witty funny and honestly nice host we have ever come across. We followed his instructions to his favorite church and it's easy to see why.

 The painted glass was so breath-taking and beautiful!

 We also walked by this courthouse, and I took a picture of its stairs. Man, even their stairs are beautiful!

 Not sure where I took this picture, or when. Hmm.

 And I love the tightly clustered buildings together. So quaint!

 And of course, the grand place. It is as grand as the name suggests, and I could just spend the whole afternoon on the square looking at all the beautiful buildings......

 Another view of the Grand Place.

 Other views of the Grand Place. Did I mention that I love this place?

 A typical chocolate shop on the streets. There's dozens of them, it's crazy. Luckily we weren't chocolate lovers, or these shops would have bled us dry. Hehe.

 And here is one of the signature monuments of Brussels, the Manneqin Pis. Not sure why it is, but it is largely popular. Pascal said it ranked the top of "the world's most disappointing places of interest" apparently, because it is so small and underwhelming. Haha.

 Deron's favorite beer bar. Very modern, very good, and I love the roasted barley they serve with the beer.

 Our attic room.I love the quaintness of it all!

The next day, we took a day trip to Brugge, because our friends said it is pretty, and we can visit a brewery there.

 Deron trying to figure out the way. He's not so great with the maps......

 The town center. The most interesting thing I found about Brugge is that everyone speaks Dutch, whereas in Brussels, everyone converses in French. It's really weird to me because they are only separated by an hour on the train.....

 Beautiful cakes!!

 The best meal of my trip, at Restaurant Zeno. Will blog about that later.

 Me about to have the best meal of my trip!

 Brugge is really quaint!

 We arrived at the half moon brewery. It was again more modern than I expected. Oh well.

 Beautiful trees!

 We went to the Dali exhibition. It was pretty cool.

 My favorite painting by Dali.

 This is supposedly modeled after the 14 stations.

 A small sculpture by Dali on sale. Should I buy this or another new bag. Duh!

 A beautiful side street.

 Us at the Delirium Cafe drinking super awesome beer.

 The Grand Place at night. Ahhhhh. :)

 We also went to the Da Vinci exhibition, but nothing was interesting except for this where they tried to use software to reproduce what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the day. So on the right is the image of it present day, and the one on the left is what it should look like at the point when Da Vinci painted it.

 Again, Deron's telling smile. We are on a beer tour!

 Our choices for the first leg. I have to say that the beers there taste so different from the same bottle of beer sold here. Just more flavor, and more fresh.

 Our beer host bitching about Leffe beer, and how it contains preservatives and corn syrup and not actually brewed in a trappist. And hence, we will never drink Leffe ever again. Hehe.

It's really funny, but the respectable beer bars we went to, none of them served Leffe!

 The bar where we tasted our first Westvletern, the best beer in the world!

 We went on to this lambic brewery, Cantillon.

 In the old days, they will brew the beers in these huge vessels!

 And buy wine barrels to contain their beers.

 The most interesting thing I learnt was that they do not add yeast on their own to make the beer. They just expose the beer to the natural yeast in the air, so I guess it's true that you will never be able to reproduce the beer anywhere else in the world!

 Us back at Moeder Lambic with May Yin (who works in Brussels now) having a post-dinner drink.

 My last night view of the Grand Place. So pretty!

 The next day we woke up, Mannequin Pis was dressed up like this. So cute! *squeals* Apparently, time from time, there will be some brewery or winery promoting their alcohol, and they will make Mannequin piss out alcohol, and you'll get to see college kids trying to drink his piss. Pleasant indeed. Ha.

My last picture of the kitchen of Carmelite guesthouse. Thanks Pascal for making us feel so welcome!

And this concludes my whole trip. Will blog about the yummy food next! :D

Love,
Keira

Sleek Original + Ultra Mattesv2 DARKS palettes swatches, review: A luxola sg haul

Hi girls (and perhaps boys),

Just a week ago I was complaining about not finding decent quality cheap eyeshadows, this week I am back with a post about some great UK drugstore finds: SLEEK MAKEUP.

Sleek Makeup from UK is definitely not anything new, I have heard raves all over the blogosphere about their Divine palettes and have been itching to try them since they first came out in 2008. However, I never got around to it because they don't ship to Singapore and shipping to US is too expensive when I was there (whooping USD13.50 which was more than the price of the actual palette). Last week, when my friend Min Ah told me about a 30% off all items on luxola.com, I never thought I would find Sleek makeup items there, imagine my excitement! I made use of the discount and got 2 Sleek eyeshadow palettes and a face contour palette, for below SGD40.

(Just a little side note about shopping on luxola.com, I really enjoyed it! First they stock a whole ton of high end luxurious makeup/skincare items, hence I guess the name Luxola. From the brands there, I would recommend Becca cosmetics, the Face Atelier foundation, Sarah Hipp lip scrub, all of which I have heard great things about and would one day love to try. Second. the website is very user friendly and clean, I love the fact that they allow you to check out using PayPal. Third, for Singapore orders, they have free 3rd delivery in person, so you don't have to worry about the postman dropping and breaking your items. If you love online shopping, I would suggest you head over there and take a look.)

On to the Sleek palettes,

I got the Divine Mineral Based Eyeshadow Palette in The Original, as well as i-Divine ultra mattesV2 DARKS palette. Each of these palette cost SGD20 on luxola and contains 12 x 1.1g mineral based eyeshadow, which works out to around SGD1.70 per shadow, making them a huge steal if good quality.

Size comparision between MAC's 1.5g shadow and Sleek's 1.1g ones

The shadows are housed in a sleek (how apt) black palette which is compact and good for traveling. I am contemplating bringing them to Seoul for my trip in July instead of my usual Naked Palettes.

Logo on the front.

Palette discription on the back.

The shadows themselves

The Original Palette contains 11 metallic, shimmery shadows and 1 lone matte black eyeshadow, which according to Sleek's site is for us to use as eyeliner. Initial thoughts are that the colors look gorgeous in the pan, and would make a great travel palette because it contains both neutral and bright colors for versatility. Upon swatching, I find the the shadows are soft, quite buttery and pigmented, all of my swatches made above were done with a single swatch. They also apply true to their color in the pan which is exciting. My personal favorites are colors number 12 an olive green and number 5 a teal blue color. The Matte black is a little lacking in quality because it applies chalky and isn't very pigmented. Also, the dark brown 11 also has chunky glitters that are prone to fallouts, but all in all I think for the SGD20 that the palette is retailing at, it is a huge steal!

The MatteV2 Darks palette is a slightly newer palette that was released last year if I am not wrong. Since matte shadows are all the rage now, I decided to give it a try. (They have a MatteV1 palette which contains bright colors, but I am more conservative when it comes to shadow colors, so I gave that a pass).

Again, these swatches were single swatches. I feel that most of the colors are pigmented and swatched relatively smoothly (click for bigger view). Even the lighter colors like Dune and Pillowtalk applied gorgeously. Unfortunately, Flesh a yellow orange color is the exact same shade as my skintone and did not apply upon swatching no matter how I tried. Besides Flesh, I was also disappointed with Thunder, even though soft, it's not pigmented enough, it will probably take at least 3-4 applications to get the color to show up like the color in the pan. Fern and Orbit somehow swatched similar on my skin, Orbit looked more green than teal, as for Fern, even though it's a very gorgeous deep green color, the texture was chalky and had fallouts. However, despite that, I still think that for the 20 dollars you are paying, this palette is worth a try if you are searching for good matte shades.

All in all, I am happy with my purchase, I would definitely repurchase Sleek palettes again sale or not. So if you guys are looking for more eyeshadow colors to play around with, or if the haze is keeping you indoors, head over to luxola.com and take a look.

Have fun!

xoxo,