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Madrid Spain Travel

Travel / 8 Hours in Madrid

posted on June 16, 2016

8 Hours in Madrid, Spain / Lix Hewett

When I went to Barcelona in March, I had to deal with the dearth of direct trains from there to my hometown of Ciudad Real. In the end, I decided to take a train to Madrid, stay there for a few hours, and then take one of the many, many Avant trains back home. It was a smart financial decision, and I knew I could easily camp out at a Starbucks near Atocha for the time it took to wait for a train, even if I couldn’t arrange a meeting with anybody!

Camp out I did, but I also got to see someone I hadn’t since I’d studied for a whole three months at university in Madrid in 2007 — a fandom friend who took me to see lovely book stalls (I could have bought things, but I’m always happier shooting them!) and have a nice tea at a little hidden bakery nearby. This is a photo diary of those eight hours — 1 PM to 9 PM — I spent in Madrid between trains.

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Barcelona Fashion Life + Style Outfits

Style / Fuzzy Flare

posted on April 22, 2016

Style / Fuzzy Flare

Flare jeans: the elusive love of my life. As I understand it, they’re coming back into fashion, but my hometown in Spain remains three years behind the rest of the world, so it’s still incredibly hard to find good pieces. Back in the January sales, however, I was determined to find a pair I loved… and I did. It was twice my budget for jeans, but it was beautiful. It fit perfectly. It looked amazing.

So I checked a few other stores, went home, thought it over, and came back that evening for them so I wouldn’t feel bad about my purchase. In hindsight, this was some A+ decision-making on my part, method included. Go Lix.

(I could do this during sale season because, see, Esprit? Not popular in Spain. The shop? A little ways away from the main chain store cluster. I was concerned, to be sure, but I knew I could risk it. The shop itself however may be gone already, and I am very saddened by this turn of events.)

I wear these jeans on a weekly basis, and they were one of the two pairs I took to Barcelona last month. For my second day there — a long walk around the city, hitting some architectural spots, a museum of modern art and, unbeknownst to me, the Cathedral of Barcelona, as well as a weird art gallery and some bits and pieces from my leisurely photo walk back to the hotel I’ve yet to identify — I paired the flare jeans with a beautiful pair of flats from Yull, thick Pimkie socks that matched my cardigan and helped me pretend I was not breaking in a new pair of flats on a major city walk, a fuzzy cardigan I was sent last year by Blue Vanilla, bless them, and one of my many standardfare long-sleeve cotton t-shirts, this one from Sfera, which, believe it or not, has some real gems if you look hard enough.

(I wouldn’t call anything in my collection of long-sleeve t-shirts a gem; I’m talking about other pieces. But I rely on long-sleeve t-shirts to be comfortable, and I have an identical shirt to this one in a sweet dark blue-green color. Both were on sale, both are comfortable as all get-out, both I wear so often I am wearing this red one again today.)

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Barcelona Fashion Life + Style Outfits

Style / Seaport

posted on April 15, 2016

Style / Seaport / Barcelona - lixhewett.com

I’ve wanted a floppy hat since I started watching Pretty Little Liars — all the way back in 2010. Spencer wore a burgundy wool (felt?) hat in an episode and looked hot as burning, and a floppy hat in another episode (the first was a cloche, if I recall), and an obsession was born. Justifying the expense of a hat is hard for me for two reasons: a) I know myself, and I know I’ll rarely wear it no matter how much I like the look, and b) it’s kind of hard to find hats that don’t engulf my entire tiny head, face included. There’s a reason most of the hats I own are custom knits.

But just days before my birthday, there was one available in multiple sizes at Pimkie, and they sent me a voucher because I have a loyalty card, and the rest is history.

Actually, the rest is: if that hat had been in my mind for a long time, this location? Was getting there. Back in September, I visited Barcelona with my best friend, and we ended up hitting Maremagnum for a quick t-shirt shop on our last night there. Maremagnum is a mall situated on one of the long docks parallel to the port by Passeig de Colom. At night, with the streets lit up, the boats moored, the soft summer breeze and the mild resignation that my camera would never capture it well, I just wanted to breathe it all in.

Well, breathe it all in, and come back sometime in daylight to photograph someone in it.

And so it was, predictably, the first place I suggested to Megan when it was time to pick a location for our first outfit shots.

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Barcelona Spain Travel

Travel / Barcelona / Sagrada Familia

posted on February 12, 2016

Travel / Barcelona / Sagrada Familia

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone to hear me say this place is astounding. It is at times beautiful, at times hilarious, and at times confusing — sometimes all three at once. And of course this was one of the places I really wanted to see in Barcelona, alongside the beach and… yeah, the beach and this were pretty much it. I’m not going to lie and say I’m knowledgeable about architecture, because I’m not — when I studied Art History in high school, my priorities were very clearly painting >>>>> architecture >>> sculpture — but when I first saw this complicated, towering creature of a church, my breath caught in my chest a little bit.

If you first see the Sagrada Familia in daylight, I think the effect might be lessened a little, because you see all the weird-ass shit at the same time as the glorious, intimidating gothic structure, or maybe it was seeing it at night first (no lights) that made it look less imposing in the sunshine. Either way, it is a lot. I hope I can make it back to Barcelona and go inside sometime.

As usual, I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves, as they’re far more eloquent than I could possibly be on this subject.

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Barcelona Spain Travel

Travel / Barcelona / Parc del Centre del Poblenou

posted on February 3, 2016

Travel / Barcelona / Parc del Centre del Poblenou - Lix Hewett

Today I bring to you a collection of photos I took at the parc del centre del Poblenou in Barcelona back in September. Annemari and I stayed at a hotel on the other end of Avinguda Diagonal from all the interesting stuff, and on our walk down to see the Sagrada Familia on Sunday, we took a detour because we, like flies, are attracted to shiny objects.

Much like the London Zoo, however, I have very little to say, and so I’m leaving you to experience this place just as we did: with no explanation.

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Photography Spain Travel

Spain / Annual Ciudad Real Fair

posted on October 20, 2015

Travel Spain / Ciudad Real Fair

Here’s a post I’ve been talking about for a little while. It’s a little visual peek into the local town fair that’s on every summer between August 15 and August 22. Many places in Spain have fairs around this time, because August 15 is a common holiday in the country (and other countries!) as the day of the Assumption of Mary. Many patron saints of towns are a Virgin Mary of some sort or another; ours is del Prado, which is my mom’s name.

On August 15, they take the sculpture down from where it stands in the cathedral, and it stays down for people to pay their respects until August 22. There are parades each day, and fireworks at the end of them; and then fireworks at midnight at the fair location.

It’s not particularly exciting, honestly, but a lot of it reminds me of my childhood. I used to love going on rides up until I was 11 or 12; I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve always still loved the fireworks. I remember families gathering at the bars, and I’m told there was a time when I was a little girl that my family went after the Witch Train ride when it set up around the province so I could ride it. I remember my grandfather spoiling me rotten and how they gave us free tickets at so many of the rides because he bought me so many.

I remember the swan stand because I was obsessed with it, though I can’t recall if I ever won anything! I didn’t do the fishing most of the time, anyway. There are a lot of target stands of various sorts, and a bingo tombola, and a bunch of other tombolas, and bars and — those are not really the things I remember fondly. For me, it was always the rides and the ice cream and the fireworks and the cotton candy. And the churros my grandfather or my parents bought.

My favorite ride as a kid was the baby Ferris wheel, and the Dragon, which I was too small for so my father usually rode with me.

I didn’t go to the fair for a few years when I was a teenager; I didn’t love going out with friends at night, and I relished the time alone when my parents and my sister went. Only for the past couple of years I’ve dragged my mom out to see the fireworks. It’s crowded, and I don’t really like rides anymore, and I’m painfully aware of how incredibly racist the mechanic bull rides are, and I wish I could deface them with graffiti, a desire I can honestly say had never crossed my mind before.

But still, there are fragments that stick. We look for them later and find them.
“Tears of things”: now that I’ve shed them, the line that most comes to me lately—
memory speaking in dactyls.

— Maryann Corbett, A Meditation on Dactylic Hexameter.
(Buy her books — affiliate link, but she’s my favorite poet)

 

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Meet Lix

Welcome to my blog! I'm Lix: full-time graphic designer for bloggers and freelancers, and part-time photographer. I'm an unapologetic cat lady and perpetually angry feminist nightmare. I like attention and pretty things, and that's why I run a lifestyle blog. Learn more.
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