A walk in hackney wick

This week has been busy! So, I am using every minute of my Saturday to catch up on blogging! 

Last week, I attended an Islamic patterns intensive course (reviewed here). I took a walk in Hackney Wick. Since, I am still new to London, that part of town was new to me. I took a walk around and the place was full of creativity and loud expressions. 

Start of the walk!

When you get off the overground, this is the first thing you see. 

It felt like walking into an abandoned movie set

Loved the colours of this one! 

I call this piece sweet tooth! 

This sculpture is really small. Had to almost lay down to take a clear picture. 

I call this real love on the channel 

I saw a little sculpture of a CAMEL in the middle of Hackney Wick. I was really amazed!

Beautiful isn't it?

It's worth going there for a little walk, especially if the weather is nice. They have few nice small (pricey) cafes in the area too.   

GoodAndProper Tea

Happy Tuesday everyone! 

I started this week with an invite to a tea tasting event for GoodProperTea at Sofa.com in their beautiful show room in Chelsea (thank you for telling me about this miss HOPinteriors. I also met the UK editor of Remodelista, Christine! Gorgeous interiors and amazing tea is the perfect start for any week! Read on, I will tell you all about it.

The beautiful

Sofa.com

show room in Chelsea

I loved their upstairs design corner! I want it to be my office! 

You all realize how much I already love tea, right? Yesterday my love for tea grew ten times more! I thought I knew what a good cup of tea tasted like and I was even feeling like somewhat of an expert, but yesterday I tasted a 

GOOD and PROPER

 cuppa. The brand is called that, too! The name really reflects the quality and the taste.

Let me tell you a little about Good&Proper. It's a new company that was set up in 2012 by British entrepreneur

Emilie Holmes

, who was so frustrated with not finding a place that sells GOOD tea in London! The land of tea. Every time she goes to a coffee shop, her friends get amazing cups of coffee with a lot of work in them and she gets a dusty tea bag. So, she started a mission and a brand going around London with her van and her pop up shops giving people a taste of real tea in it's real form. She found a gap in the market and she went for it! Now, she is educating the nation about tea and spreading the yumminess! When you get a cup of tea from GP, it's the perfect temperature and perfect timing. You don't get a tea bag to faff around with. You just get really good tea!  

Wouldn't you just want this parked outside your house?!

source

Tea Secret: use filtered water! 

The Good&Proper Brew Bar set up. This is similar to how it looks in the van!

Tea Secret: If your tea tastes wrong then the water was too hot and it burned the tea! 

The kinds of teas we tried

Each tea from the ones above was in its natural form without any additives or extra flavouring. Tasting the natural flavour of each tea was a great experience. The tea on its own is perfect without anything else. 

Tea Fact: All teas come from the same exact plant, whether they are black, green, white or anything in between. What makes them different is the preparation process and the amount of oxdization they get.   

Black Teas:

They could take hot water on 100-90 degrees

• Ceylon. This one was strong and full bodied.

• Golden Tips: Asam. The tea leaf was really cool. It actually has golden tips!

• Darjeeling 2nd Flush: It tasted a little spicy and mature. I am having it this morning. I am on my second cup it's so delicious.

• Keemun: It tasted a little chocolaty and SO GOOD! To me that was the lightest black tea.

Semi Black/ Semi Green Tea (Aka Olong):

These two were my favorite teas (starting from yesterday!). They tasted just right! The water temperature should be 90-85

• Honey Orchid: Dark olong. Tasted like honey and it was sweet, light, rosy and just wonderful.

• Yellow Gold: Light olong. This was happiness in a cup! very relaxing and up lifting. It even supplied me with sweet tea dreams heheh.

Green Teas:

Least amount of heat 75-65

• Jade Tips: This one was a perfect flowery and fresh green tea.

• Sencha: This is an everyday Japanese green tea. It tasted more veggie and grassy.

Emilie Holmes pouring goodness into our cups

Tea Fact: There are no calories in tea! 

Kate from Sofa getting a taste!

Of course there was homemade brownies afterwards! bye bye fake diet!

My generous gift from Good&Proper *mashallah* 

I used it this morning for a very delicious cuppa!

By the way, that infuser is really good quality.

Get one from here 

Good and Proper have really thought of all the details. From the amazing quality of their teas to the very smart packaging! I am already planning how many gift boxes I want to get for all my tea lover friends! It was a really good experience! Getting all these useful information and tasting that very yummy teas! Thank you

Sofa.com

for arranging it. I think tea tasting is the new best thing! 

For more info and pix from Sofa.com & GP tea, follow them on twitter and Instagram 

Sofa.com Twitter

Sofa.com Instagram

Good&Proper Twitter

Good&Proper Instagram 

The British Museum

My absolute favorite thing in the whole of London is the British Museum. I could just spend a whole day there. It's just full of international culture and valuable wonders. I like their little audio tour guide at least you would know what's going on. It's a rich source for information and stories. It's only two pounds something to hire it if you have a student card. I think it's very worth it! Especially, that entrance is free. They also have some changing exhibitions every few months. Some of them require an extra fee to see. 

It's impossible to take a pic of just the entrance. It's always overloaded with people.

The design of it on its own is worth seeing. The building was completed in 1823 in the Greek Revival style. It was designed as four wings; North, South, West & East. In 2000, Norman Foster, an amazing English designer who is renowned internationally designed the glass dome reading room, which gave the building that contemporary touch making it a real example for two worlds colliding and creating wonderful architecture. 

Norman Foster

The impressive glass dome with its pattern that reflects on the white structure and flooring 

Here's a picture round of of a trip I took down the museum: 

Started the visit with checking out the Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone. This is what started languages!

It's always crowded around it and the protective glass makes it hard to take a proper pic

A try for a Rosetta stone close up

After that, I followed the path to the Egyptian heritage and saw so many pharaohs. Most pictures had million people passing through, so here are few close ups  

If you love the pharaohs so much,

you can buy a little cheesy pharaoh duck as a reminder

I continued to the section about Africa

This actually spells an Arabic sentence! Can you see it?

It says المعرفة احلى من العسل  which means "knowledge is sweeter than honey"

Look at how the artefacts displayed

I really wanted one of these!

Then headed to Asia section

Followed it with the Islamic World

Old Arabic script

This is pretty interesting if you are into Arabic calligraphy

The 99 names of Allah written in Arabic

Close up!

I really loved all these patterns

 Then to a picture gallery that was on at that time

At the end, the gift shop is a must!

The book stand in the gift shop is full of interesting looking books!

They are organized by historical era and country. 

Winter Wonderland in London

Since before I arrived to London, everyone was telling me about this amazing winter wonderland in Hyde Park, and how I should go and be amazed. One of my friends was going on a photo walk group there, so I tagged along. We got there late, so we missed the group, but we fully enjoyed ourselves walking around, taking pictures and eating chocolaty treats. The wonderland was lovely, nothing super amazing. It was so crowded and full of kids. It was hard to take people free pix, so I caved at the end, and took pix of places and people. After all, people make the places :)