Ben and I were married in October, 2012 and we did not had a honeymoon at that time as I was still finishing up my graduate studies and he just started working.Then in 2013 we had our ceremony in China, which was a bustle hustle one month trip (our families are 1500km apart) that spared us no time for a real honeymoon. We always wanted a makeup honeymoon and finally we did it!
We had an evening flight from Toronto to Barcelona on September 29 and spent 4 days there (just in time for the Catalonia Independence strike!!). Then we took the high speed train to Paris on October 4, and spent another 4 days there. It was a short trip but we had great time (though Ben complained too much walking and museums but not enough time for relaxing and chill lol… gotta improve our itinerary next time!).
Highlight of the trip includes visiting of the Christian Dior: Couturier du Reve retrospective show at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. It’s just a wonderful experience to be able to immerse in the masterpieces of the masters in Haute Couture. The exhibition is dreamy, dramatic and simply unforgettable. I had seen the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2008, the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010 and the Issey Miyake exhibition at the National Art Center of Tokyo in 2016. The Dior exhibition is the best of the best. There is a retrospective Dior exhibition at ROM now and it’s a must-see this Christmas for me!
We visited two fabric shops in Barcelona: Ribes & Casals and Nunoya.
Ribes & Casals is huge! I am quite impressed with their high ceiling and lofty space, with vast selection of home-dec and fashion fabrics. They have nice tweeds and silks. Unfortunately making a suit or an evening dress is still beyond my skills level and hence I left the shop without any purchase.
Nunoya is not far away from Ribes & Casals. This is THE PLACE for sumptuous Japanese fabrics! Here you will find Echino, Nani Iro, Kokka and lots of other cute Japanese prints. They also have lots of beautiful quilting cotton weight prints from the US and Europe. My only complaint is the price! It’s too hard to decide what to get when every bolt of fabric is so nice but also so expensive (plus a hefty addition of tax). In the end, I brought 3 meters of fabrics back home - the Echino fabrics that I used to make some of the cushions.
Before the trip I envisioned spending at least an afternoon for fabric shopping in Paris. But that did not come true. We spent too much time in the museums and walking along the Seine River. In the end, we went to only one of the many places in my list: Anna Ka Bazaar, a little cozy fabric and needlework shop in the 11th arr and not far away from where we stayed, the CitizenM hotel near Paris Gare de Lyon. The shop owner designs the beautiful Atelier Brunette fabrics. I picked about 5 assorted meters of their cotton lawn as souvenirs for myself.
Since I still have many destinations in Paris that I want to visit and revisit. It’s a great excuse to plan another trip here...maybe for our 10th anniversary.