Lifestyle

Skyybar @ Westcord Fashion Hotel

Last weekend, me (Stephanie) and my sister celebrated our birthday at the Skyybar of the Westcord Fashion Hotel in Amsterdam.

The Westcord Fashion Hotel is located in the westside of the city and is easy to reach by tram, bus and car (parking fee). The Skyybar is on the 10th floor of the hotel. It is closed (not open-air), fashionable with mostly dark colors and shiny stuff and of course you get a nice view of the beautiful city of Amsterdam.

First impression

When you enter the first things you’ll notice is the bar and the mannequins everywhere, making it feel like you’re entering a Paris catwalk show. The Skyybar is not that big, so it actually feels cosy. On the right side there is a lounge with beautiful lights on the ceiling, which distinguishes the Skyybar from any other bars as you actually get a feeling that you’re clubbing. From 10 pm there is even a DJ on site. The Skyybar looks beautiful and classy and gives honor to it’s hotel’s name. You can order drinks, cocktails and bites like sushi. Although not so exclusive like other (open-air) sky bars, it is a nice place to hang out and have some drinks.

Party

The theme of our party was… tadaa… “This City of Gold”! and believe it or not my sister came up with it. The gold did fit the whole interior of the bar which was mostly black and velvet.

For a party from 10-35 people, you can reserve the lounge upstairs and that’s what we did. The lounge covers half of the bar, so you can still see the bar from above and enjoy the music. The lounge looks nice and fashionable like the rest of the bar. They say it is for max 35 people, but i’m pretty sure 50 people would fit too. We definitely invited more than 35 people. You don’t have to pay to reserve the lounge, but there is a minimal spending limit of 500 euro’s, which is not hard to spend when you invite so many people.

The beers and wine aren’t very expensive, around 3 euro’s. Liquor on the other hand was much more expensive, but normal for Amsterdam (7 euro’s). We pre-ordered some bites, like vegetable egg rolls, mini croquettes, sushi and potato wedges. The egg rolls, croquettes and potato wedges were delicious. The sushi was too, but there were some complaints that they fell apart easily. We also pre-ordered a birthday cake. This was quite expensive, costing 5 euro’s per person. We ordered a small cake as no one really wants to eat cake anyway. You can order whatever flavour cake you like. We decided to go for the whipped cream-flavour, which was delicious!

With the reservation, we also got our personal waiters/waitresses. But don’t expect them to be there all the time when it’s busy, which is too bad.

The Skyybar is open from 5 pm to 2 am and you can decided from what time you want to reserve the lounge area. We decided to start the party at 8 pm. From 10 pm there is a DJ and the dancing can start. And because it is your own private lounge, no stranger will be there to annoy you. Funny to say, it did made me feel somewhat special to say “Sorry, private party”… 😉 lol

Overall impression

The Skyybar is a nice place to have some drinks with friends, and it is great for a party and for an affordable price. The bar and lounge look classy, food and drinks are good and there is a DJ, so you can also dance if you want. The decor is impressive and most guests couldn’t resist taking lots of beautiful pictures. The location is a bit of the city center but not far away and easy to reach. Downfall was the service which could have been better if maybe they had more personnel. But still, that couldn’t ruin the fun with my dearest friends and family. It was an amazing night. One not quickly to be forgotten, for sure.

Kop van Jut

We had a high tea at the “Kop van Jut”-restaurant. It literally means “the head of Jut”. De Kop van Jut is located at the popular and touristic Leidseplein. To be honest, I usually don’t go to the restaurants in touristic places, because the quality is usually bad. But the Dutch restaurants in the Leidseplein are actually quite good. De Kop van Jut is one of these typical Dutch restaurants. It is small, the interior is brown and sober. What makes it not typical Dutch is the service, because they have nice and helpful personnel.

The high tea normally costs 17, 50 euro’s, so it is quite a good price. The time is from 2:30 pm to 5 pm. For this price you get a lot of tea in cute tea pots and tea cups and a wide variety of tea, goat cheese croquette from grandma Bob, roasted tomato and paprika soup, quiche, scones with fruitjam and clotted cream, banana bread, cream puffs, chocolate nut cake and buttercream cookies.

My opinion:

You get enough bites for the price. All the food was vegetarian, so there was no hassel with people who didn’t eat meat or a specific kind of meat. I liked the tomato paprika soup, but because it was served together with the rest of the food it was already cold when i drank it. The goat cheese croquette is original as i don’t see that often in high tea’s. The quiche was very tasteful. The scones and banana bread were fine.

Overall:

The location of the restaurant is great and is has a typical Dutch vibe without the typical Dutch service. Even though, our reservation was only until 5 pm, they didn’t throw us out. The Dutch menu looked nice though we haven’t tried it. The high tea is affordable and good for the price. Downfall is that it some of the food were not home made. This restaurant is good for a nice diner with Dutch food or a quick high tea with friends.

U6

The ‘Utrechtsestraat’ is a street in Amsterdam with nice boutiques and restaurants. It’s near the well known Rembrandt Square, the second city area where the nightlife happens. U6 is a cozy restaurant with a French and International Cuisine. Because it’s near the Rembrandt Square, the restaurant is quite findable for tourists. The staff is from different international backgrounds like Spain and Turkey. There is a regular menu, but also the famous chef’s 3 Course Menu. This menu costs € 22,50.

If you choose a 3 Course Menu, there are various choices of vegetarian, meat and fish dishes. For the starter we choose the puff pastry with chopped salmon, onions and lettuce. The puff pastry dough was very light and crispy which matched with the salmon pretty well.

Here are 3 options for the main course:

Sweet sour noodles with shrimp and broccoli

Nile perch with Parma ham and mashed potatoes

Pork medallions with mushroom sauce

And here are some desserts!

Crème brûlée

Strawberry Cheesecake

Red fruits lattice pie

What we thought about U6: The location is ideal because it’s in the center. Whether you finished your shopping spree in Amsterdam or going to a club after dinner and drinks, the restaurant is close to pretty much everything you need. The noodles main course were not our favorite because the sauce was a bit too sweet. The other dishes were really nice, especially the nile perch with creamy mashed potatoes. The staff were warm, friendly and patient. Last but not least 22,50 EUR for 3 courses is not expensive at all!

Recipe: Salad with Parma Ham, Goat Cheese and Dates

This delicious salad is ready between 5 and 10 minutes! Just mix the ingredients described below, a child can do the laundry (Dutch saying means: It’s too damn easy!). This great recipe comes from Zinaida, a good friend of mine. She even got her little daughter of 4 enjoying vegatables by serving this salad. The slightly salty flavour of Parma ham and sweet dates gives the perfect flavor. Suggestion: If you don’t eat or like pork, switch the Parma ham with beef carpaccio to keep the mixture of salt and sweet.

Ingredients:

For the salad
Parma Ham ( 5 slices)
Leaf lettuce with baby spinach (80 gram)
Goat Cheese with honey (125 gram)
Sliced black olives
5 Medjool dates
Spring onions
Cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons pine nuts

For the vinaigrette
Caesar Salad dressing

Method:

Garnish a big bowl with the lettuce and spinach, sliced cherry tomatoes, Parma ham and black olives. Deseed the dates and chop them into half. Slice the goat cheese in small pieces. Roast the pine nuts and arrange everything in the bowl. Pour over the dressing and serve. Enjoy!

Inspiration Zhang Ziyi – Magic

Vesper Bar

In the midst of the hip and cosy neighbourhood Jordaan, there is this small peculiar bar, where the bartenders are not tall and have long beards. The Versper bar serves many different cocktails, but the most popular is the Zombie. It is a passionfruit punch cocktail and is very good actually. First, you have to take a shot of the flaming drink inside the passion fruit and then drink the rest of the cocktail. They say this drink is so strong that you are only allowed to have two per night. But with a little bit of persuasion we were allowed to have 3 🙂

The cocktails cost around 13 euro’s each, so it was a good cue not to drinks too much. And be sure to be there on time, because the bar is very small and usually full. But nevertheless, this bar is definitely worth the visit.

The Vesper Bar

Vinkerstraat 57

Zombie cocktails

BEAUTY REVIEW: YVES SAINT LAURENT ROUGE PUR COUTURE LIPSTICK

One of my favorite brands: I personally use a lot of Yves Saint Laurent lipsticks because I like the pigmentation and the colors they offer.. But I’m still going to be as objective as I should be reviewing their new lipstick range. The newest lipstick Rouge Pur Couture is designed by Lloyd Simmonds Yves Saint Laurent International Makeup Artist and the shades are: 31 Rose Fusain, 32 Pourpre Carmin, 33 Rouge Narcisse, 34 Brun Abstrait, 35 Rouge Vernis, and 36 Corail Legende Shade I’m trying: 35 Rouge Vernis

Package shows: Rouge Pur Couture: Pure Colour Satiny Radiance. 1 lipstick is 3,8 gram.

What the lipstick should do: Lips should be saturated with intense color thanks to the Coloreveal Technology. Natural extracts provide moisture that lasts all day. The lipstick also protects your lipstick because it has SPF 15.

Price: 33,95 EUR / 35 USD

The lipstick itself looks fabulous and luxurious because of the golden package. The lipstick gives good coverage on the lips. Red is difficult color and I actually thought that this color wouldn’t suit me well because I often use red lipsticks with a more pink pigment. When I’ve tried the lipstick on it suited well. The lipstick really has a high pigmentation and it’s not easy to get rid of stains for example on clothes.

Advice to keep the red lipstick stain of your teeth: Put your finger in your mouth and form an O with your mouth around your finger. Gently slide your finger straight out of your mouth and the red color on the inner lips will be now left on your finger.

After a few hours the lipstick on the inside of my lips was gone anyway because of drinking and eating. The lipstick was intact on the other parts of the lips.

Like: High Pigmentation, all the colors of the range are classy and it has SPF 15

Don’t like: After a few hours it looks quite obvious that the lipstick is gone on the inner parts of the lips.

FOOD: DIM SUM DISHES (PART 2)

It´s time for Dim Sum Dishes Part 2! If you haven´t read the first part yet (with more explanation about Dim Sum and the 7 first dishes), click here.

Today 4 new dishes to read about:

Custard bun 奶黃包 (nǎihuáng bāo)
These buns are filled with a mix of butter, eggs and custard, instantly reminding me of good days in Singapore or Taiwan when I’m eating them. Also a good dim sum dish for friends to start, who haven’t eaten dim sum before.

Deep fried shrimp dumplings 水饺 (Sui Kau)
This is also a typical Cantonese Dim Sum dish, the dumplings can be deep-fried als you can see here but also cooked and served with soup. I love dumplings most when they are served with noodle soup or pan fried. The dumplings are filled with shrimps, meat, bamboo and other vegetables.

Beef shu mai dumplings 牛焼売 (xíu mại)
These shu mai dumplings were already served during the Qing Dynasty and there are various ways to make shu mai dumplings. This variant is the beef shu mai and they are steamed in bamboo baskets before served. A good alternative when you don’t want to eat the original shu mai with pork.

Steamed chicken and shiitake buns 鸡仔包
Shiitake is a type of mushroom and combined with chicken in a soft white bun, It will taste delicious! These buns are actually easy to make, as long as you have the right flour to use. If you use the regular flour from the supermarket, the bun itself won’t have the same soft texture and will turn out to be more yellowish instead of white.

Inspirational Quote

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South Korean Beauty: LANEIGE Winterland Magic Makeup Collection

I love the South Korean brand LANEIGE! The first time I’ve been introduced to this brand was back in 2012, when my cousin Zhiling offered me this night mask of the brand LANEIGE. She used it almost every night and said I should do too, because in the winter my skin will be more dehydrated. I’m hooked on this night mask (will write about the night mask and more of this brand soon), but since then I loved every LANEIGE product that passed by. So, two months ago..my other cousin Ying went to Singapore. She came back with this holiday makeup gift package! I haven’t used it, because the glitter eye shadow would be perfect for New Years Eve but she came back after.

Today I decided to write a review about the product, this makeup box deserved it haha!

Package: Shiny and bright!

Package shows: A complete “all you need” winter holiday makeup collection consisting of 3 lipsticks, 4 eye shadows and one brush. (The brush and eye shadow applicator is from good quality)

Inside are two make up looks that you can create with the eye shadow and lipsticks. Pure Fantasy and Glow fantasy, I will create two looks in this post later but not these ones.

Three lipsticks in the shades: Beige Chiffon, Pink Garden and Blonde Coral
The lipsticks are pretty small, so I was wondering if it would be easy to use.

Four eye shadows: Pearl Light Pink, Pearl Pink, Pearl Coral, Pearl Khaki
I’m not entirely sure if you could see it on my picture, but the eye shadows consist of a lot of glitter. Only the khaki shade has a lot of pigment. The colors are nice for spring, almost all are pastel shades.

Price: Between 50 and 80 dollars. It depends on which website you go, the makeup cases are still offered online.

Pink glitter look:
There are many shades of pink, so I wanted to try out a spring look with the pink eye shadows (Pearl Pink and Light Pearl Pink) and beige chiffon lipstick. I used a little bit of the khaki eye shadow. The lipstick is not extreme moisturizing and can feel a bit dry after a few hours. Applying the lipstick was easy though. There were so many glitters that came out of the eye shadow but luckily and miraculously… at the end there were no glitters on the other parts of my face left behind. Like this look with these shades!

Party glitter look:
Only for the night! I used a lot of khaki eye shadows here and noticed that the eye shadows were not the easiest to blend. I’ve used the Light Pink Pearl, Pearl Coral and Pearl Khaki shades. As you can see there is a big difference between the pink glitter look and the party glitter look because the khaki eye shadow is much more pigmented. I used the lip colour Pearl Coral, I really like the pink color! In the corner of my eye by the tear duct, I’ve used a little bit shiny gold eye shadow (not from the LANEIGE makeup case).
Two party looks created with the LANEIGE Winterland Magic Makeup Collection!