Restauranting: Ikibana

June 19, 2013 — Leave a comment

I just discovered that one of my blog posts on how to use Pinterest has been featured by the SITS Girls site! Explains why my blog traffic has been exploding lately. Thank you so much to the SITS girls for featuring my little article! And now, instead of a recipe this week {since right now I still don’t have much of a kitchen!}, I’m going to talk restaurants! A very special restaurant in particular!

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Ikibana Borne. We walked past it several times coming back and forth from the K+K Hotel Picasso and thought it would be a great place to sit, enjoy a glass of wine or a beer, grab some tapas, and people-watch. It looked modern but not overly trendy, busy enough to be good but not so busy that we couldn’t have a conversation, and smelled delicious.

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We found a favorite restaurant to add to our world-wide list!

Ikibana serves Japanese-Brazilian fusion food. For someone who’s been to both places a number of times and enjoys both styles of cuisine, it was a match that could either be too strange to work – or really, really good. It was the latter and beyond. It was excellent.

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We tried both lunch and dinner offerings at Ikibana. I can’t rave enough about their lunch special. For about €16, you get a four course meal including your selection of appetizer, a soup or salad, a main entree, and dessert. Drinks included. Drinks included?? Can you say caipirinhas, anyone? Delicious. Scott and I sampled this, and then brought Karen and Sabrina back with us another day for a go at the tasting menu.

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Everything had the lightness and sweet crunchy tempura and soy taste of traditional Japanese cuisine, but there were plenty of hints of Brazilian barbecue in there, hearty slices of meat, the bold introduction of cheeses and salsas here and there, and natural fruits, and everything was blended together brilliantly. I absolutely love the idea, and can’t wait until I have my full kitchen together to try making some of these dishes!

Here’s hoping all of you have a wonderful day – and if you’re ever in Barcelona, definitely seek out Ikibana!

KCS

In FOOD, Food & Wine, TRAVEL , , , , , , , ,
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Barcelona: The Waterfront

June 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

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In planning our adventures in Barcelona, I honestly didn’t know where to start – but I went with my usual philosophy when it comes to planning trips. Go crazy and get ALL the options. Then narrow it down from there. So we went and got all of the different activity options when we got there and took them with us on our first-day walkabout with the intent of sitting down at a nice restaurant and doing some planning. Naturally, when we saw the beautiful beaches and the gorgeous Mediterranean Sea, we got distracted.

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The theater display there is a gigantic carved sandcastle that the Viennese theater group keeps up. They play operas there and attract quite a crowd. We sat and listened for a while, and then wandered on. Oh, by the way, that monolith in the background is the Wyndham Hotel. The thing is huge, but it serves as a great directional marker if you’re wandering around in the city – if you see the Wyndham, you know where the main harbor is.

So we wandered on, and found…sharks!

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Yeah, you guessed it, we’re not actually in the shark tank, and we’re definitely not cage diving. I’m a big opponent of cage diving, to be honest. I dive with sharks. I want them to remain skittish of strange things in the water, not be attracted to them or associate them with chum in the water. Aaaaanyway…we visited the Barcelona Aquarium and had a great time looking at all the exotic species. It’s amazing how many species of fish transcend ocean borders, and just how many strange and different ones there are.

After that, we headed back to the harbor.

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And discovered a lovely little place on the waterfront called La Gavina. Now, ever since my dad started making his paella recipe at home, I’ve loved it, so I knew that when I visited Spain, I had to try some and see just how authentic our home version was. Plus, we had a prime location for people watching!

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And when the food arrived, my friends…it was glorious. I present to you the garlic shrimp appetizer, the {no shells} seafood paella, and the tiramisu cake.

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Turns out, our family seafood paella is pretty authentic! I love Dad’s addition of the avocado slices and extra seasonings, but everything else tasted true to what I know. And it was delicious. I’m definitely glad we did a lot of walking, because I really don’t think I’d be fitting in my pants if we hadn’t after all this!

Hope you’re enjoying your virtual tour of Barcelona – stay tuned for more after tomorrow’s Recipe of the Week break!

KCS

If you want more posts on Barcelona:

Hola from Barcelona | The City Garden | The Waterfront | The Gothic Quarter (coming soon!) | Gaudi’s Architecture (coming soon!) | The Funicular Railway and Montjuic (coming soon!)

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Barcelona: The City Garden

June 17, 2013 — 1 Comment

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Now that I’m settled in Virginia, I’m finally getting the chance to go through, catalogue, and share all my pictures from our trip to Europe. I’m planning, bit by bit, to take you on little tours of the amazing cities we were able to visit, and show you some of the sights we saw. I’m starting with one of my favorites, and one of the first places we explored in Barcelona. It’s a fabulous garden simply known as “the city garden” or “the city park.” Parque de la Ciudadela in Catalan.

Let’s start with La Cascada / The Waterfall. You come through the gardens on one of the many miles of walking/jogging paths and all of a sudden, this enormous structure looms out of the foliage. It looks a little like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The structure is part of an enormous waterfall, surrounded by carved statues of the Greek and Roman pantheon, with Aphrodite in her seashell at the top of the falls and a golden statue of Apollo on top. It was built comparatively recently {1881} for the Universal Exhibition held in Barcelona – and therein you find one of the underlying patterns of the city. Barcelona’s layout was relatively simple until they hosted three events: the Universal Exhibition of 1888, the 1929 International Exposition, and the 1992 Olympics. A huge amount of the city was constructed specifically for these events.

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The zoo is another huge attraction at the city garden. We didn’t have a chance to go visit it, unfortunately, but we did poke around outside – and we heard plenty of monkeys yelling at the visiting crowds from all throughout the park!

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There’s a very large arboretum in the park that’s free and open to the public. While it’s specifically meant to house certain display species, most of the larger plants in the park are marked with tags showing their names and a little information on them, so the entire park is itself a huge botanical display.

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Outside the park, you come to a huge plaza where Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf stands. It’s no relation to the ones in Paris or in Rome, even though it was built in that style. It was built for the 1888 Exhibition. One of the things we never figured out was how there came to be so many parrots in the plaza {seriously, there were dozens of little green parrots}, and what the spray painted gaming track there was for. We’re guessing it was either for the many roller-blading and skateboarders who frequent the plaza, or someone just got creative. Who knows? We’d like to come back and find out though!

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Well, that’s a first look at the grand city of Barcelona! Stay tuned for more!

KCS

If you want more posts on Barcelona:

Hola from Barcelona | The City Garden | The Waterfront | The Gothic Quarter (coming soon!) | Gaudi’s Architecture (coming soon!) | The Funicular Railway and Montjuic (coming soon!)

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Leaving New York

June 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

Today we’re saying a bittersweet goodbye to New York, New York. It’s strange, because I feel like I’ve been talking about leaving New York forever and now we’re actually doing it. Everything we need to head south is packed up and ready to go, the house is spruced up, painted, cleaned {oh, Lord, did we clean}, the cats have already been flown to the in-laws, and it’s just me and the husband, ready to hit the road.

My cadets always tell me that happiness is West Point in the rearview mirror, and back when I was a cadet, I would have agreed with them. This time, things were completely different. This time, I actually felt like I could appreciate the significance of the place and what we were doing there.

Some amazing people walked in the halls where I’ve been walking, either sitting in the classrooms or teaching behind the desk, and I know there were some amazing people sitting in my classroom. Future CEOs, generals, senators, a few potential heads of state among our exchange cadets, maybe a future president. Hopefully all of whom find a way to serve. Just to be a little piece of that is amazing. The faculty from many universities can say the same thing, but it’s just different to be a professor at West Point.

Let’s just say that for these brilliant minds, these all-state athletes, these team captains, these charismatic kids, to put their hand up and swear an oath to fight our country’s battles, knowing that they’re sacrificing the good life they could have had elsewhere, that Harvard education, that football scholarship, whatever else…it takes a special kind of crazy they call courage. I’m still amazed they let me in to be a cadet, and even more amazed that they let me back in to teach. If they let me come back and teach some more after I go get my doctorate, I’ll be turning cartwheels, but I’ll be flabbergasted, too.

Receiving my end of tour award

Receiving my end of tour award

Leaving West Point itself isn’t the only hard part, although the friends we’ve made there have been tremendous. Leaving New York itself, the whirling hive of activity and art and cuisine and life that it is, is hard. There’s just so much everything in New York that you could never, ever be bored, and you could never, ever hope to do it all.

I did give it a good shot, though – I want to momentarily revisit my New York Bucket List. There are a lot of things I had in mind to do back in January, and it was an ambitious list. To start with, there are a number of things I didn’t knock off the list, but believe me, those are staying on my list for next time! Those are:

  • The carriage ride in Central Park,
  • Going to the Central Park Zoo,
  • Touring Ellis Island,
  • Hitting NYC Fashion Week {damn rainstorms!},
  • Touring a historic home,
  • Visiting the Botanical Gardens,
  • Visiting the Hamptons,
  • Visiting the Museum of Modern Art,
  • Visiting Coney Island,
  • Eating a pastry outside Tiffany’s,
  • Grimaldi’s Pizzaria,
  • Seeing a show at the Lincoln Center,
  • Biking the Bronx River Parkway,
  • Climbing the new gym at the Palisades, and
  • Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

But we did manage to do a lot of things! Here are all the things we did manage to accomplish:

  • Two more Broadway plays,
  • Touring Central Park and Belvedere Castle,
  • Seeing the USS Intrepid and the Enterprise Shuttle,
  • Skiing,
  • Visiting the Bronx Zoo,
  • The New York Motorcycle Show,
  • The International Auto Show,
  • Wine tasting in the Finger Lakes,
  • Visiting the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
  • Eating a cupcake at the famous Magnolia Bakery,
  • Hiking part of the Appalachian trail – several times, and
  • Taking a walkabout day in SoHo.

There are zillions of other things we did that didn’t even make it on the list because we didn’t know about them yet, like visiting the Chalet of Canandaigua, going on great dates arranged by How About We for Couples, taking visiting friends on historical tours of West Point, cooking and photography, and so much more, and there are zillions more things out there yet to discover. I’m hoping we get a chance to get out there and do them.

For now, we’re headed south, so the next time I post on here {which will probably be the next Sunday Currently}, I’ll be talking to you from beautiful Virginia. I’m missing New York already, and I’m probably going to get a little bit sappy at the state line, but I’m excited for all the adventures to come!

Hope everyone’s having a lovely weekend, and talk to you soon!

KCS

 

 

In Army Boots, LIFE, TRAVEL , , , , , ,
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Friday Style: Pour Me a B&G!

June 14, 2013 — 2 Comments

Hello, friends, and happy Friday! What a shockingly long week. It boggles my mind to think that just Monday morning, Scott and I were sitting in the terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport, looking back on our amazing week in Europe. Then all our stuff went flying out of the house in a whirlwind, and now we’re living out of suitcases on an air mattress until this weekend, when we pack up all our stuff and head to Virginia!

The more I think about it, as much as I hate the idea that it’s going to mean long distance for Scott and me, I’m looking forward to spending some more time in Virginia. I’m hoping I can take a swing through Charlottesville and say hi to a few friends who are at UVa and the JAG school out there, head out to DC to see my aunt again, anne really take some time to enjoy the area before we start heading west.

And since it’s Friday Style, we need some style for visiting those old haunts. This one is inspired by a Charlottesville staple – the bourbon and ginger ale. I’ve pretty much sworn off liquor these days {beer and wine are just fine, thanks}, but I used to enjoy these in and around the downtown pedestrian mall or even on little trips to Richmond. If you want a great version, you should try Betsy’s recipe here. And if it were an outfit, this is what it would look like to me!

Pour me a B&G

If nothing else, I just need these fantastic colors and the Kendra Scott jewelry in my life! Here’s hoping you have a fantastic weekend, friends, and wish us well as we start our journey southward!

KCS

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Living Aloha: Shipping and Handling

June 13, 2013 — 2 Comments

 

Substitute photographic equipment for the game boxes, but…yeah. Guilty. Aaaaaaanyway…

We’re dealing with a minor moving crisis right now – and I say crisis because that’s what it’s going to feel like if, when we end up out in Hawaii, all our stuff is waiting for a pick-up order in a warehouse in Virginia.

In order to ship property overseas, most moving companies are required to store everything in narrow wooden crates that can be put into shipping containers. These crates are sealed onsite with serial numbered seals, you get the seal numbers when the movers are done, and life is good. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Our trouble, I think, started with our move surveyor. It’s usually a good idea to have someone from the company come out prior to your move and survey your stuff so that the movers know how many boxes of what type to bring. Our moving team was really unhappy with our surveyor during the first day of the move because he didn’t tell them to bring enough boxes and they brought the wrong type, so they had to finish early, but they were making such great progress, we didn’t worry about it too much.

Things were compounded by our location and our steep driveway. We live on a busy street with no shoulder for a moving truck to park in, and we’re on a steep hill with a steeper driveway that, while long, wasn’t long enough for the moving truck. So our guys got inventive and rented a U-Haul to shuttle our boxes about 200m down the hill to the larger parking lot where the moving truck was parked. So I didn’t see the truck until I looked down the road to see where the movers wanted us to coast our motorcycles.

All our things were just being loaded into a moving truck. No crates. I asked the supervisor when our things were going to be crated and when I was going to get the seal numbers, and he gave me a funny look and said crating was extra, outside our contract. I told him that I thought everything needed to be crated for an overseas movement and asked to see his copy of the shipping documents and contract.

Our stuff was slated to be put in storage in Virginia for the duration of our tour in Hawaii.

Hoo, boy.

So after being on the phone with everyone possible, working my way up the customer service chain from the dispatcher to the move coordinator to our transportation office, I found out again that the problem originated with how the surveyor filled out his documents. There’s a big difference between putting down “Fort Shafter, HI” and “Fort Shafter, VA.” Guess which one he put down? And like that, with one clerical error, I came within inches of totally losing track of, well, our life.

From a systems perspective, having a single point of failure like that is ridiculous. All of the Army transportation documents were correct and the government bill of lading was actually correct {for once!}, so there should have been some redundancy in the process that kept a clerical error on the part of one person from screwing up our entire shipment. The move order should have been generated from the government bill of lading, not the surveyor’s notes. There are a lot of flaws in the system.

Still, this is one of those situations where a crisis can become an opportunity. We’ve identified some systemic flaws, pros and cons of their customer service, positives on the part of the moving team being so adaptable and willing to help us out, and I’m essentially giving the company a free systems and customer service analysis. And customer service has handled everything so well so far that I’m rescinding my earlier course of action: to throw the surveyor one hell of a beating.

Anyway, here are some lessons learned for moving in general, moving overseas specifically:

  1. KNOW the rules. This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you have things that need special equipment or special treatment, you should know how they’re supposed to be shipped. Do you know how much packing material your movers should be using around fragile items, or how those fragile top-load-only items should be marked? You should.
  2. CHECK the process. This was where I went wrong. Everything was going so smoothly that I didn’t go down and inspect the truck. I assumed everything was being crated down at the truck since that’s what’s happened with all my other overseas moves and I didn’t go check to make sure that was happening.
  3. CHECK your paperwork. Whether it’s digital or paper, there’s a form out there that someone filled out that somehow governs your destiny. YOU NEED TO SEE THAT FORM. Make sure your stuff is going the right place, make sure you’re signing for the right house loan amount, make sure you’re electing the correct form of surgery. All it takes is one tired person putting in the wrong keystroke and your life could get really ugly REALLY fast. Check it.
  4. CONTACTS are essential. You need to know who to call in case of an emergency, a screw-up, bad attitudes, an injury, a case of the Mondays, whatever. Have those numbers where you can get to them, because chances are, the poor guys on the ground are just doing what their paperwork says to do and they aren’t empowered to make major changes. Don’t yell at them, please. Find the person who can make changes and fix things, the person empowered to make those major changes, and don’t yell at them either. It’s amazing how much more ground you can cover by being nice.
  5. BE NICE. Screw-ups happen. And to be honest, my initial reaction looks something like the Tazmanian Devil PMSing, but I’ve learned to just walk away and hide for about five minutes until the blind red rage passes. After that, patience, persistence, and a little common decency are usually what you need to fix a problem. If you’re a jerk, you’re not exactly giving someone incentive to make your life better.

Anyway, I have a bright outlook for today. I’ve got some time before all the customer service offices open again and I have to start calling people again, so I’m going to plop on our air mattress and enjoy some coffee. Things happen. You stop, you think, you deal with them, and you move on. I will get this fixed, and I’ll fix some systemic issues with the company in the process. If I could figure out how to get a consulting commission from this, I’d be happy as a clam.

Here’s hoping you all are having a great day, and that if any obstacles are standing in your way, that you take the time to take that deep breath, get centered, and go give them hell with a smile on your face.

KCS

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Surviving Life in Boxes

June 12, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Hello friends, and happy Wednesday! And for once, I’m sorry, but I don’t have a recipe to share with you. Because the picture above is what our life looks like right now.

Since my husband and I started dating, we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time living out of boxes. We moved to New York together, me from Virginia and him from Florida, we moved from our little apartment in Tarrytown to our house at West Point together, and now we’re getting ready to move back to Hawaii – by way of a number of different states! I have to attend six weeks of training in Virginia in preparation for my new job as a systems analyst and Scott, in the meantime, is going back to brush up his digital effects skills in Florida. It won’t be six weeks straight of long distance – we do have an anniversary to celebrate in a couple weeks! – but after that, we’ll start our trek westward. While the training won’t be rigorous, it’ll give me a chance to get a couple projects and papers knocked out, and maybe get some work done on that, well, book thing!

There are a lot of challenges that we have to overcome before Virginia, though, and at the top of the list is getting all the stuff out of the house, packing everything we’re going to need in Virginia and skipping across the country – about two months on the road! – and surviving in the house in the process. Our movers have been fantastic – in the first day, they’ve gotten almost everything packed – but they’re almost too good. We’ve had to run through the house making sure we’ve got all the documents we need, clothes, toiletries, and everything else, because if we’re too slow, it’s getting packed!

I’ve kept some of our kitchen stuff for the road to avoid having to eat out every meal. Now, I love all my kitchen appliances, gadgets, and plates, but when it comes to survival, if you’re a creative chef, you don’t need a whole lot. Here’s my bare minimum list for kitchen equipment:

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Yep, that’s it. My griddle, my 10″ skillet, a spatula, a flexible spatula, and a wooden mixing spoon. There isn’t a whole lot I can’t cook with these items. I made steak and cottage potatoes last night, I made scrambled eggs this morning, and I’ll pound flat chicken cutlets and make Chicken Marsala for dinner tonight. Throw together a salad on the side, and I’ve got the makings of tasty, nutritious meals. This will travel with me to Virginia, and then get shipped out when I leave so I can keep cooking and make an attempt to get back on track with my diet. During the past couple weeks of travel, I picked up more than souvenirs. No, I don’t regret those extra pounds. What I would regret would have been traveling to two of the culinary capitals of the world and not tasting the delicious food!

Oh, on that note, I just want to share my first ptch – a foodie’s tour of Barcelona! Enjoy :)

KCS

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Our RI 2013 Presentation

June 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Hello friends! After the Blog Every Day in May challenge, I feel like I’ve taken a long blogging hiatus, even if it’s only been a couple days! We’re still recovering from a whirlwind trip through Barcelona and Paris – and our first day of moving out of our New York house. We got back to the house late on Monday and almost immediately had to unpack, do laundry, and repack all the things we don’t want the movers to take – so to say things are busy around here is an understatement!

I’m still very excited about the responses we’ve been getting from our presentation at the Reputation Institute’s conference in Barcelona! In a typically practitioner-heavy conference, we were one of only a few academic papers accepted, but we still garnered a large and interested audience who gave us some great feedback on our work.

The project focused on creating a system dynamics causal loop model to explain the influence relationships between spokesperson actions and reputation and corporate actions and reputation, something that has been prominent in the news lately {two words for you: Lance Armstrong}. For system dynamics, it wasn’t a particularly mathematically rigorous model, but it was a brand new application both for systems engineering and for media and marketing, which is exciting! If you’re interested in what we presented, I’ve shared the slideshow here:

I really enjoyed getting a chance to present professionally with family and friends – my sister and often collaborator Karen, Sabrina and Monica who have been longtime friends and were among my bridesmaids, and my friend and colleague from West Point, Christy – and I love that we also share enough work interests to work together!

Even though I’m not in the field of reputation and communication, I’ve absolutely loved being able to attend the Reputation Institute’s conference. I attended my first one in Beijing in 2008 to watch Karen present and was hooked. Since then, I’ve been able to attend and present at the 2010 conference in Rio and while I couldn’t attend Milan in 2012, Karen presented our work on using value models to construct and identify the best crisis messages on social media. For Karen, and for you communications professionals out there, it’s a must-go conference. It’s her sixth one! Hopefully we can add number seven to her presentation list and number four to mine next year in Miami!

KCS

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Sunday Currently, vol. 3

June 9, 2013 — Leave a comment

I seriously can’t wait to share all our adventures from this trip. It’s been so amazing on so many levels, from the conference to playing tourist abroad {a first for my husband – he’s been deployed, but that was his only experience with international travel up until this} to the beautiful sights and, of course, the food. With me, you’re always going to get a rundown of the food. I’m a serious foodie. I’m going to have to be a serious fitness junkie when I get to Virginia because of all the good food I’ve been enjoying, but hey, details. For now, here’s a little snapshot from what I’m up to…

Currently…

In…Paris, France. Probably in Disneyland Paris by the time you’re reading this! We’ve loved our time in the City of Lights, but we couldn’t come out here and not see what Disney has to offer. And if that sounds at all strange to you, let me just remind you of where we got married, that my husband is a digital effects artist and animation buff, and that We. Love. Disney.

Reading…Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist who enjoys pop culture and uses actual physics and mathematics to explain how things like phasers, transporters, forcefields, teleportation, and time travel could theoretically work. There’s a lot of great science in there, and a lot of awesome Star Trek and Dr. Who references, so this geek is one happy reader!

Writing…travel notes and a to-do list for when we get back. I have cats to get packed up, myself to get to Virginia, and a husband to get to Florida.

Listening…to Louis Armstrong sing La Vie en Rose. It always makes me sit back and smile.

Thinking…that these days have been very special to me and my husband. It’s been great being able to spend this much quality time together doing amazing things, especially since we’re going to be spending some time apart while I’m at school in Virginia and he’s at school in Florida. It’s only six weeks, but I’m already not looking forward to it. Fortunately, we’ll be together for our anniversary, the Fourth of July, and every other excuse I can make to go see him.

Smelling…flowers. There are fresh flowers everywhere in this town. Love it.

Wishing…that we could spend more time here. I came across a cooking class that included a market tour that I’d love to try, a bunch of cafes and bistros I want to dine in, and places that embody the little nuances that make up Paris. Maybe we’ll come back and spend a longer time here. Scott’s interested in seeing Normandy and the World War II historical sites, so it just might happen!

Hoping…that we can sleep through the bumpy parts of the flight tomorrow when we head back. It’s an evilly early flight.

Wearing…jeans, flats, layered shirts, and a scarf. It’s cold out here, and it’s been overcast, but that’s Paris for you. There are beautiful days, but there are a lot of days full of gray skies.

Loving…Barcelona. Paris. The little glimpse of Oslo we got to see. Travel. Seeing new sights. Getting my eyes opened to the world. Seeing things with family and getting to go, “Ooh, look at that!” and having them know exactly what I mean.

Wanting…to stay.

Needing…to go, since there are lots of things to do, and I never like being in limbo. I like being settled someplace, but not the process of getting there and getting settled.

Feeling…exhausted, invigorated, excited, and amazed. This is a beautiful world we live in, and there are so many things that must be seen in person to truly be appreciated and understood, and even then, knowing that you have to be back because there’s so much more you could learn.

Clicking…travel sites. Finding my flights to Florida, adventures in Denver, flights to California, adventures in Seattle, checking our Alaska cruise arrangements, and getting set for our move to Hawaii. This has been a marvelous adventure, but it’s only the beginning.

What’s on your mind, currently?

KCS

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Friday Style: Something Retro, Something New

June 7, 2013 — 4 Comments

Hello, folks, and happy Friday! Today we’re headed on the Eurail from Barcelona to Paris, and I couldn’t be more excited to show my husband the City of Lights for the first time! We’re taking a whirlwind tour of the city, ending with a trip, of course, to Disneyland Paris, and then it’s back to the states to finish closing out everything and to head south. Barcelona has been incredible and I can’t wait to show you all the photos I’ve taken and all the great food we’ve tried. It’s definitely on our future to-visit list.

One of the travel essentials I’ve discovered is a good pair of polarized sunglasses. My eyes are beyond light sensitive, so if it’s anything other than full cloud cover, I’m out in sunglasses. For today’s Friday Style, I wanted to share some of my favorites, and a couple outfits to wear in them – at least ones I picked out to wear while touring Europe. Since I love things both retro and modern, here’s two takes on one outfit idea.

Something old, Something new

The first outfit is for a sunny romantic stroll around the Jardin du Luxembourg, the second is for tearing down the expressway on a shiny new Ducati Streetfighter 848. I love my Harley, but Ducati just has a fierce design I love! Accordingly, I have two sets of Oakleys for each occasion. When I’m not wearing my sport Gatorz {nothing beats them for high speed adventures like riding motorcycles or skydiving}, I’ve got polarized wireframe Oakleys.

Here’s hoping you all have a wonderful weekend!

KCS

P.S. This post was not sponsored by Oakley, Ducati, or Gatorz, or any of the brands I have listed here – I just love them, so I’m sharing them with you!

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