Road trip moments: Spiš Castle, Slovakia

Hey guys! Thank you for your response to the giveaway, I'm really really happy you like it. :) Someone asked me what the green base for Waking up in Vegas is on that picture - it's Essie School of Hard Rocks, here's my post on it. :)

Today I continue with my road trip moments. We left Košice and continued up to the northern Slovakia for this beauty. I think we planned the whole trip around it at the back of our minds. Spiš castle, or as Slovacs call it Spišský hrad. I've already shown you castles on my blog and so regular readers already know how much I adore castles, as long as they don't look too modern or baroque. They are my great love, if I get the chance to visit one, you can be sure you'll meet me there. I'm lucky enough to live in a country full of castles, I even camped for a week at one once (still remaining one of my all time favourite castles in the world, Rihemberk castle near Branik or Ajdovščina if that makes it easier for orientation) ... in short, castles are my thing. 

Spiš castle is ... unbelievable. It was really foggy that day and so we were worried a bit how everything will turn out and when will we actually spot it. The thing is, you don't really get it how huge this monster is until you actually see it with your own eyes. Monster is a pet name and I mean it as a compliment. The castle is enormous, it's like the mother of all castles. It's also a part of UNESCO heritage, I'm glad about that, since that usually means someone will keep an eye on it.

We were visiting it off main season and they warned us in the email (they do reply, thumbs up!) that in case of snow and ice the castle will be closed and that there are no guided tours in November. So I held my fingers crossed the weather will endure and it did. Mind you, it was cold as hell, but dry. We understood the moment we started walking up to the castle why they close everything when there's snow. Don't even try to reach it with ice and snow on the land, you'll break your leg, seriously. 

When you come in a very sweet lady welcomes you - we spoke in German, in general I think Slovak people find it easier to communicate in German. A pleasant surprise: we got the mic guide for entire castle (they have it in English and German). The guide itself is very well made. It explains the history of every point/part of castle you visit and there is usually an extra explanation or story/legend with pushing the red button, if you want to hear more about anything. Yay! I LOVE to hear more about what I see, so we gladly took the mic and went discovering. 

Again, some pictures, I held back, trust me. Maybe you should enlarge them, they look really tiny as I type the entry.

 This is how it looks from far away. Really far away. The picture is not blurry, it's really foggy. ;)

You can see by the main tower we're getting closer to the castle hill here and yet we're still not under the castle. It's already so huge I cannot capture it entirely. 

 A picture shot from the battlement, one of the crenel anyway. You could see entire village from the hill. Or we could, if the fog would rise. 

 The orange signs were the guide stops. :) 

 I found the location of this cannon very amusing. You bearly notice it, we stood on that spot for a couple of minutes before I looked right and noticed it. It seemed to me like it was trying to fit in the wall like "just standing here, minding my own business, lalala". Eh, I'm weird sometimes.

 The really REALLY narrow staircase up the tower. 

Two pictures from the top of the tower. On the second you can catch a glimpse of the forest near the castle (on the other side of the parking place), it was SO gorgeous, covered with rime and with  the autumn colours still peeking through the whitness. 

 Another one from the crenel ... yeah, I liked the photo idea. ;)

My mani, with the part of the castle in the background. I thought Misa Toxic Seduction rocks hard enough to visit the coolest castle in Slovakia. :) The reflection on my nails is so clear I can see us in my nails, lol. 

The whole tour lasted for about an hour and a half, with us stopping quite a lot to enjoy the view and the castle itself. I love the microphone guides since they allow you to discover the place at your own speed. The castle wasn't too crowded, which was a major plus too. And the entrance fee is stinkingly cheap, we payed 5 € for both of us (again me with the student discount), but maybe it gets higher in the season (May-October, if I'm not mistaken). The only thing I regreted was that the souvenir shop was closed. I really wanted to buy something about the castle. Bummer. Well, it's an excuse to go there again! Quite close to Spiš castle is also Drevenik with stone caves and awesome flora, and we'd love to see that sometimes in the Spring. Why not stop again at Spiš castle then too? ;)

Any castle lovers out there? Do recommend them, the more the better! All I can say is, if you're in Slovakia, make plans for Spiš castle too. You won't regret it.

Thank you for reading! 

Loads to celebrate - a giveaway

I bet you thought: "That little bitch. Before she left she told us there will be a giveaway when she gets back and what do we get when she returns? Freaking novels about her road trip and no freaking giveaway!" Or didn't you? ;) I of course haven't forgotten about my little promise. I just waited for a silly thing, as I was getting really close to it. This is my 300th post on Did someone say nail polish! Holy cow! 300 posts! I thought it would be fun to launch a giveaway on my 300th post.

And not just the post number ... I really planned this giveaway to happen months ago. First with me reaching 666 followers (I even had the title of the giveaway - The Number of the Beast, hehe), but my studies just didn't allow it to happen and time passed. Then I wanted one for 700 followers, but I had a big break in blogging when that happened. Then, on 19th September, my first blogoversary happened, and all I did was study my ass off for a very important exam. And I'm sure a lot of other little or big milestones that I missed. Right now I'm over 800 lovely people who take their precious time to read my blog and it's about damn time I show you all the stuff I gathered for you in the last months. Since there are a lot of stuff I wanted to celebrate with this giveaway, I decided I'll just call it "Loads to celebrate". Since there is.

I wanted to do as many colours and finishes as I could so hopefully you'll all find something that looks appealing to you in the giveaway! 

And a closer look: 

•  Depend 204 (all the way from Finland, we didn't get it in Slovenia. Thanks Kaneli, for getting it for me!)
• Eveline Holografic Shine 401
• Deborah Milano Pret A Porter Burlesque Red
• Aden Cosmetics 58
• Aden Cosmetic 53

• Essence 50's Girls Reloaded LE You're a Heartbreaker
• Essence Re-mix your Style LE DANCE Waking up in Vegast top coat
• Kiko 268 
• Catrice Papagena LE Welcome to the Jungle (thanks to Tevta for getting me another bottle!)

My pictures of some of them, to get a better look at the colours (they are NOT made with polish I'm giving away, I have my own bottles!):

And I still haven't worn Welcome to the Jungle, OMG, I was sure I did! Some awesome swatches of the rest: 

Welcome to the Jungle (Parokeets)

You're a Heartbreaker (Nihrida)

Burlesque Red (Cherry Colors)

Kiko 268 (Babina70 flickr)

I'm sorry, I couldn't find any swatches of Aden Cosmetics polishes. They are both glitter, one blue in a blue base, other pink and blue in clear base. They looked cool, so I grabbed them on my road trip for ya. :)

I'm going to keep it simple this time. All you need to do is follow Did someone say nail polish via GFC and fill in the google document below. But here's one thing I'm allowing myself to do. As you probably noticed, I love your comments. I greatly appreciate every single one of them. Because I know commenting takes time. It really does. When I had time to comment a lot of blogs often, it easily took me an hour and a half to get through them all. So I completely understand all of you who simply do not have time to comment, even when you want to. I honestly do. But I'd love to show gratitute to all of my regular commentators in the past year by giving them an extra entry. I know the giveaway isn't big, but i still hope you'll see it as a token of my gratitude for every single minute you spend on commenting this little corner of mine. It doesn't mean I consider you a regular commentator only if you comment on every single one of my posts. Basically if I remember you commenting, I consider you a regular one, since that usually means you did it more than once and it doesn't really matter if the last comment was months ago or last week. I know things happen and sometimes you just have to stay away from the computer for weeks.

The giveaway is opened internationally and it ends on December 15th at midnight. Any sort of cheating will lead to deleting all of your entries to the giveaway. If you're not sure if you already entered, write a comment, don't do another entry! 

All in all it has been a great year, my dear people. I love blogging and the nail polish blogsphere is seriously one of the nicest I've ever encounter. I met some wonderful people in this year and I hope I'll meet even more of you in the next. :) Thank you for sticking around! YOU ARE AWESOME!

Do tell in the comments if you like the colours and if anything is left unclear! Thank you!

RGB Sea

Hey people! I have another beauty for you today. This one is utterly gorgeous, I do not have words for this polish, seriously, it left me speechless when I put it on. I also did a bazillion photos and had the hardest time picking a few. The depth of the shimmer is mesmerizing. RGB Sea. Wow. The name is a perfection itself too. That's exactly how I like sea. Greenish. Not the turquoise-water-white-beach stuff. Deep, greenish sea with pebbles beach for me, thank you. 

The formula is superb. No faults. I'm not kidding. Insanely pigmented colour, silky smooth application, brush that applies the polish all by itself. Two coats are more than enough, I did the third one to see if the colour would deepen, but two coats are enough. Hard Candy Envy is a dupe of the RGB Sea colour, but you will not get the superb formula with it, as VV tells us. I think the formula is well worth the buy. 

I also like the minimalistic design of the bottle and the box. Elegant and simple.

For fun I searched through my stash to find a bottle that has the biggest difference between the bottle size and the amount of the polish. Givenchy with 8 ml won. This is how it looks like nex to the 12 ml RGB. And it just hit me that I should turn the RGB bottle on the side for you to see just how much thinner it is than Givenchy that is round. RGB is about a centimeter thick.

All I can say about RGB Sea is that it is perfect. It just is.  

If you get the chance, grab it. Or you not as impressed with the colour as I am? :)

Thank you for reading!

Road trip moments: Košice, Slovakia

Hey darlings. How are you doing? It was a beautiful sunny day here in Slovenia. And I slept through half of it, I went to bed really really late yesterday. Oh well. I hate being cold too. Our house just doesn't seem to warm up at all. Let's continue with some cool things from my road trip that I wanted to show you. 

After Hungary we went to Slovakia/Slovaška, and I was most excited about our visit to Košice. Košice are the second largest city of Slovakia and I am completely in love with them. Such a lovely city, with a very pleasant atmosphere. Since we didn't have whole lot of time, my two major things to visit in Košice were the St. Elizabeth Cathedral (I'm a HUGE fan of gothic cathedrals) and the Mikluš prison museum, where you are able to see how Košice looked like in the Middle Ages and how the prison of that time looked like. I'm a huge fan of Middle Ages too, plus the criminal-law sanctions of any time in the history, so it was a major win for me. 

We arrived as planned in our lovely hotel, Bankov. The whole experience of the hotel would be perfect, if there wasn't for the unpleasant waiters. I'm sorry, I hate unpleasant waiters, they can really ruin your dinner. It's not my fault she didn't speak a word of English nor German and didn't even try to communicate with us with Slovak language, and she should treat us just like the rest of the guests. That aside, the food was to die for, and the rest of the staff really nice. 

It was quite surprising to see how rarely we found someone who spoke English in Slovakia even on major tourist points. But most of the time they tried their best to communicate with us, which is a major plus. We quickly realized we can understand each other if only we spoke a bit slower than usual - Slovak language is very close to all the other slavic languages, for me it was a cool mixture of Slovene and any language of Southern Balkan (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian) that I also understand, so it wasn't really a problem, as long as we gave each other a minute. 

Btw, a cool little trifle. We call our country Slovenija (it's pronounced the same as Slovenia, as long as you pronounce the "e" as in "love" not as "ee" in "deep") and the adjective of the word is "slovensko". The slovak word for Slovakia is "slovensko" and they call Slovenia "slovinsko". :) It's quite obvious we're all Slavonic brethren.

I'll show you a lot of photos in this one, it's going to be a long post, I hope you'll enjoy it, but I want to emphasize one thing. I'm not a professional photographer. Moreover, I think i'm somewhere in between of a bad and average amateur. I don't see the lights or the angles. I like a thing, I press the button, end of story. So don't think these will rock your world, for that google the things and you'll get a lot of professional photos. Or even better, visit them. It's the best way to see them anyway.

The cute little doggy statue at the entrance door of our hotel (that actually has a function, as one of you lovely readers pointed out :D)

When we got to the centre of Košice it was already getting dark. BTW, for those who will drive there with a car - their parking is really well organized and cheap. But do pay for it, they will check regularly for the tickets and will bust your ass. I don't see the point of cheating since the parking is so cheap, but we saw people do it anyway.

The main street called Hlavná ulica was easy to find and is quite recognizable with the little stream down the middle of the street. I fell in love with the whole look immediately. Wide, spacious street, cool buildings all around, not too many people. We went immediately to the St. Elizabeth Cathedral, since I read on the internet it closes up earlier than the Mikluš museum. Sadly, it is partially under construction and we couldn't see any sign of tours or anything going on. So we just checked it out all around. 

The magnificence that is St. Elizabeth Cathedral. The Slovak call it Dóm svätej Alžbety (we'd say Katedrala svete Elizabete) and it's a total must-see. My pictures don't do it justice at all. It's gorgeous with all the gothic details. The pictures on the first day aren't so nice, my camera doesn't work well in the dark, these were taken the next morning.

 I love the spikes everywhere and the tall pointy windows!!

 Upper and below pictures show my love for these kind of doors. Why are our modern doors so ugly? I want such details on my doors too! 

I greatly enjoyed walking around the cathedral and seeing the park and the chapel near it, even in the evening. Then we went to the Mikluš museum or Miklušova väznica, wanting to get there in time, according to the opening hours I found on the internet. And it was already closed. We missed it for about 45 minutes. I seriously advise you to write them an email next time, I'm writing here now and officially: they are opened from 9h to 16h (last entrance), but write them an email just in case. 

The problem my BF now had all of the sudden was me being in a seriously bad mood. You don't want me in my bad mood. Seriously, just turn around and walk away. I hated myself for it, because I know how annoying I am when moody and I wanted to turn it off but couldn't, I wanted to see the Mikluš museum and I knew the next day we're already heading for the castles and we will not be able to pull this off. I was in such a bad mood I didn't even want to go shoe shopping (as he tried to suggest to cheer me up). That's usually quite alarming. Of course after some time he did something incredibly cute as he usually does and I started laughing like crazy and so my bad mood passed. I really love him for that. We walked through entire Košice, going through the park and later on stopping at a cool bar that played Iron Maiden so loud we could hear it on the street. FTW! The beer was good and so was the cappuccino and so the day ended well. Btw, another thing I noticed. Punk isn't dead. It just moved to Košice! It was surprising how many punks are in Košice, I guess it's the main subculture there, or so it seemed. 

The next day we got up a little late, our travelling already showing on our energy and we started discussing how hectic the day would be if we wanted to catch two castles that both closed at 15 o'clock and a concert that started at 18 o'clock, all being a few hours drive from Košice. We decided to stay in Košice, visit the Mikluš museum and skip a castle, so we'd have more time on the other castle and be on time in Žilina (where the concert happened). I was actually quite happy I was able to see Košice in the daylight and visit the museum so it was a good plan. :) Few pictures from the museum, where all was awesome after a few complications in the beginning.

 The executer's swords. They chopped heads with these! Ugh!

 As for doors, so for the keys. Can we please bring back the beautiful large, carved keys they used to have? Why the modern ugliness?

 Upper and picture below show the prisoners were hardly comfortable. Middle Ages really excelled at torture.

The only picture I'm showing from the basement, so-called "interrogation room", for I do not know how sensitive your are about these things. Basically a torture room, with a gloomy feeling as you walk down the wonky stairs and a presentation of one of the torture devices with the wax dolls. Middle Ages really didn't care about resocialization, no sir. Still, a totally interesting insight. You can probably get a pretty good idea what these spikes below were for. 

It was an awesome tour, really. We had the mic with english guide for every room in the museum and the tour lasted for almost an hour and a half. The entrance fee is also stinkingly cheap (3€ for both of us, I had student discount), so I really do recommend the visit, if you're into this sort of things. There is also a good video and an awesome model about and of the middle-age Košice, but I've already posted way too many pictures. 

It turned out to be an awesome idea to stay and Košice are now one of my favourite places in Europe. I have to visit them again, really. After Košice we went to the Spiš Castle, but that beauty deserves an entire post for itself.

Tell me, please, do you find these kind of posts interesting? Are they too long? Any comment on the city itself? :)

Thank you for reading!

Paket petek

Isn't it awesome I can do another Paket petek (Package Friday)?? You know why it's awesome? That's right, because that means Ulmiel got a package full of goodies this week!

The customs sent their love right before I went on my roadtrip. I wasn't very happy about it, since basically, I could have had the package already in my hands, if there wasn't for the customs procedure. Oh well ... they finally sent it right on the day I got back to Slovenia, so when I got home, the package awaited me. Torn, poorly stuck together with a short piece of duct tape and with two (!) polishes completely out of the bubble wrap (you know, so they could easily hit each other and break, why make it hard for them and unwrap only one?)! Not only did they tear it, they took them out and didn't bother at all to wrap them again. Can I mention too that one of these two was one of my biggest lemmings in nail polish ever, Nubar Greener? My wrath disturbed the Force that day, really. Not for long though, I got SO happy about the package, it was pure and utter perfection. I love my swap buddy, seriously, she rocks.

 

Not one but TWO from *the* Nubar collection for me, Greener and Forest! I honestly couldn't sit anymore when I saw them in the package. The entire package is perfect, but these two really made me go

The gif was probably nicked from the awesome Kaz (Pretty Random). She puts cool stuff like this on the blog, making me laugh like hell.

As for the eyeshadows. I know, I know. I keep telling everyone who is willing to listen I have a strict no-buy in eyeshadow department. And now this. I blame it on Kelly (Vampy Varnish). Who can say no to a product she presents so amazingly in her post? Not me, no sir. And they really are great. 

Perfect package, yes. What did you get in your latest package? Do tell, don't be shy!

Thank you for reading!

Búk 116 with Nfu Oh & Essence flakie comparison

Hey darlings! What's in the news today? I'm having a coffee day today, first a coffee/tea time with a couple of friends, including one of the darlings that came to Slovenia for a couple of days (she went to Spain for a year) and then another later in the evening, so I'm really happy about that. :) 

Today I want to show you my roadtrip mani. This baby lasted for three days and I still didn't get tired of it, but the mani got so chipped I just had to remove it. BTW; being tired as hell and in a hotel room isn't really the best motivation for a foil removal. The first time I regreted putting a flakie on my nails. 

I also compared Essence Waking up in Vegas with Nfu Oh 49 on this mani, I wondered how close they get. 

If you see any kind of difference between them, your sight is better than mine. I didn't see any difference, they are both the same. In general Nfu Oh has a bit bigger flakies, but that's the only difference I could find. They're both amazing, don't you think? 

My base colour was Búk 116, the only polish from Lithuania that I haven't tried yet. I've already talked about it, the brand is a local Lithuanian brand with a nice brush and an old but good formula. 116 is a bit disappointing though. It looks SO awesome in the bottle, sadly the shimmer is much much weaker on the nails. If it would be so strong as it is in the bottle this colour would rock.

Even in lightbox the shimmer is poor, on softer light it disappears completely. This was three coats, the formula is a bit runny and smelly, but all in all a very well behaved polish. I just wish the shimmer would be more visible. Still, it's an excellent base for the flakies! :) 

What do you think about these babies? Did you get any of the top coats from Re-mix your style LE?

Thank you for reading!

Well, I'm back.

Extra points for everyone who knows the origin of the title. ;) Heya darlings! How have you been? I'm back a bit later than expected, but you know how it is right after you return from a trip. I'm tired and suffer from my standard post-travel sadness, combined with one of my dearest friends leaving for a whole year, without any kind of visits to the homeland in between. It's quite a cut. I miss her already. 

I decided I'll show and tell you a bit about the roadtrip me and my BF did, what say you, would you be interested in that? I won't do a diary, I'll just point out a few interesting or/and fun or/and cool places and things we saw, k?

First some facts. We did a giant circle that started in Slovenia (obviously) and then we went: Hungary - Slovakia - Czech Republic - Austria and back to Ljubljana, it lasted for 6 days, and we arranged the stops so my BF didn't have to drive an entire day because that's just too exhausting. 

First two days we spent in Hungary or Madžarska as we call our neighbour's country. First day was in a lovely spa near our border (Szombathely) and the second in Budapest, the capital of Madžarska. We didn't see much of it, as, personally I'm not that drawn to Hungary's past and sightseeing and I focused more on Slovakia on this roadtrip. But I would highly recommend you the Walzer hotel if you're planning to go to Budapest. The staff is SO friendly and kind, they helped us with bus tickets and everything, the rooms are comfortable and the food is ah-mazing. They are 10-minute-bus ride away from the center of Budapest and the bus stop is like 3 minute walk from the hotel, plus the bus stops there really often, we didn't wait for it going to or from the city centre. 

Since we didn't plan anything special to see in Budapest we just took a long walk around the city centre, to get some feeling of the city and to see the old buildings (I'm a fan, yes) and the bridges and so on. But mostly Budapest meant polish shopping. My BF discovered quite a cool shop - I didn't even want to go in, it looked like a grocery store. But on the second floor they had a local cosmetic brand called Aden cosmetics (plus a few others) with, oh yes, nail polish! I also bought an eyeliner, since it was stinkgly cheap. It's soft, shows colour really well and stays on for entire day. For  65 cents that's basically a legalized steal, don't you think?

On the picture also Essence and Golden Rose that i bought in Slovakia, but this is my complete roadtrip haul when it comes to cosmetics. I would have bought more, but I already broke my budget as it is. In my defence, these aren't all for me! :P

Oh, and a funny thing we saw on our way to Slovakia. Hungarians took AC/DC with "Highway to hell" quite seriously. 

Later on it turned out to be a factory of an energy drink, but it was still amusing. 

Sorry for the bad photos, they were taken from a driving vehicle. 

After leaving Hungary the most expected part of our roadtrip began. Slovakia was the "main" country we wanted to visit and we had a blast. I'll show you more in the next posts.

Tell me, anything new in nail polish world I missed in this week? 

Thank you for reading!

A short break, a question and a preview

Hello darlings! How are you doing? I just wanted to let you know I'm going on a short roadtrip on Wednesday and I won't be back to Slovenia until Tuesday. I cannot wait to get moving, I really like the plan we made for the trip, hopefully the weather will also be on our side. :)  Tomorrow I won't have time to post, since I'll be packing, that's why I decided I'll post today. So you'll have a break from me for an entire week, haha. ;)

The question of the post is for lovely ladies from Slovakia and Czech Republic. These two countries are the main ones we'll be travelling in. Naturally I'm curious and would love to know if I can get any special nail polish beauties in these two countries that I should pay attention to and grab it if I get the chance? Any name of the drugstores, nail polish brands or even towns/streets will be highly appreciated. You can also write me an email (Contact page on the blog), if you're not comfortable with comments. :) I'm keeping my fingers crossed for any Polish brand, since I'll be much closer to Poland, but I dunno, maybe Slovakia has some kickass brands too. :D 

And the preview part. I'm going to launch my giveaway, that I've been promising for months, when I get back. So I decided I'll show you a couple of colours I already have for the prize. Just for fun.

Have fun this week! *muah*

Baubles up! mani

Heya darlings. It's beautiful autumn sunny day here in Ljubljana. Cold, but beautiful. Well it was anyway, it's already getting dark. I have another flakie layering today for you, again with Essie and Essence. I decided it's finally time that I crack open my Essence Glisten Up! bottle since Bobbing for Baubles seemed like a perfect base colour for it. 

Glisten Up! is  an already discontinued Color&go beauty and before Waking up in Vegas basically the only flakie polish we could get here for really little money. Still, I never read much about it. What is more, when Essence discontinued some colours (which means they're selling them 50% off already cheap regular price), Glisten Up! always seemed to stay behind, I always got the chance to pick a bottle or two for swapping, even if I never searched for it actively. I have no idea why, it's a gorgeous flakie polish. Plus it's a baby sister of stunning Nfu Oh 52. 

So, pictures! Essie Bobbing for Baubles with Essence Glisten Up!

Why I call this a baby sister of Nfu Oh 52? As you can see the colour play of green and blue is pretty much the same in flakies, plus Glisten Up! also contains the green shimmer, like 52. The differences are that flakies in Glisten Up! are sparser (you can see I basically don't have them on my index finger) and smaller, thus you'd need more coats to achieve what you achieve with one of 52. Plus, it has a holographic glitter in the mix too and a different base colour (it's lighter). It's rare glitter, but I prefer it that way, it spices up a bit the whole thing. All in all a wonderful layering polish, don't you think? Oh, removing is really nice and easy too. I removed it few hours ago, didn't even need the foil technique. 

I think this was a nice and cheap substitution for Nfu Oh 52. Ok, it's not as rich as Nfu Oh, and doesn't give so much depth, but considering the availability it had and the price difference, I dare say so. I got mine in a giveaway from Colorful Bottle (that i miss on blogsphere!) actually. If you're reading this, thank you, dear. :) I've already talked about Bobbing for Baubles, so no words on that beauty here. :)

Do you have Glisten Up!? Do you find it close to 52 too?

Thank you for reading!