Rothenburg Day 2 - Lacebook Tea Party

On Saturday we had a lot of time to get ready. The Tea Party should start at 14:00h, but we arrived 1 hour earlier to take some pictures in the garden. I wore my new "Innocent Rose" JSK, which I bought during the Btssb Sale, after I saw it in the Paris shop and fell in love with it! I bought it 1 week before the Tea Party and I didn't thought that it will arrive in time, BUT it arrived on Thursday evening! Sooo lucky :D

Then it was time to enter the Tea Party! When I entered the room, I entered Lolita heaven *_* Not only the room was pretty, but also the table decoration was incredible beautiful! I never saw such beautiful decoration before. You could really see how much effort all the organizers put into this Tea Party!

Our table neightbors:

The fans were presents from the Tea Party. Very good idea, because it was really hot that day!

The food was already prepared at each table. I think this is a good idea, so nobody needs to wait in a queue at the buffet in order to get some food. I almost directly started to eat because I was soo hungry xD. Only downside was that they didn't prepared enough hearty food. They only had 1 sandwich per person and we thought that they would bring more sandwhiches, so I directly took 2 pieces. When I realized that there wasn't enough, I gave one sandwhich to another person. BUT it really wasn't a big deal, because there was MORE then enough sweet food for everyone! There were Macarons <3, raspberry cakes, small cupcakes, mini-cakes with lemon and basilicum flavour (sounds strange but was delicious!) and many other sweets.

We also had a timetable prepared at each table:

14:15 - Time for eating // 14:30 - Outfit contest // 15:45 - Workshop medieval dance // 16:30 - shops opened // 17:00 - raffle // 18:00 - end

First take pictures...

...then start eating! *nom nom nom*

Then it was time for the outfit contest. Everyone who wanted to enter should come to the front and present their outfit with a small text. I'm not sure if I liked the idea, because I think many girls were too shy to enter, therefore many girls with amazing outfits didn't entered the contest. But I wanted to enter and I convinced Ami to enter with me as twins, thought our outfits weren't true twins, we only had the same dress xD

After the first girls presented their outfits, I realized that the Tea Party theme was "Rococo Fairy Tale". I totally forgot about the theme, so within 10 seconds I prepared our speech and told everyone that we would be "The double Lottie" (Das doppelte Lottchen) - Lolita Rococo Princess version xDDD. Haha okay I know it was a bit silly and I think everyone knew that I just made it up, but whatever xDDD

After this we had time to eat, talk and taking pictures. But after a while I got a bit bored. I think there could have been some games, so you could interact more with all Lolitas and kill a bit time while waiting for the photograhper. We had 4 photographers which was A LOT, but with 50 Lolitas not everyone could take pictures at the same time, so waiting time was there.

Pictures with the photographers (they weren't taken all at once but I just put them all here xD):

Picture taken by Kia Rose / Vampire Symphony

Then they announced the medival dancing lesson, and Ami and me decided to join the lesson spontaneoulsy. It was organized by Jasmin and she did a great job!!! Medival dance is perfect for Lolitas! Only downside was that there were some perfectionists in the course who asked tons of questions. Of course it's okay to ask questions but this course was only a 45 minutes crash course, not a professional course were every step should be perfect ^^'''' So we only learned a sequence of 20 seconds. But in medival dance, you often repeat the same steps again and again, and you just change your dancing partners after every sequence. That means, even if our sequence was 20 seconds long, you could do this dance for several hours if you want!


Then it was time for the raffle! They had many small prizes, and even if you didn't won something during the raffle, you got another small prize. But honestly the raffle only had "small" prizes, I think it's good when all prizes have nearly the same value. I even won something, a necklace by Li-Paro! I'm happy about my prize because it has real flowers in it, and I love flowers <3

Then they announced the winners of the outfit contest. The girl who won started to wear Lolita only in October 2013!! I really couldn't believe it because her outfit was perfect, and I wear Lolita since 4 years and still don't look as perfect as her <3. All attendees of the Tea Party could vote for the winner, but then the organizers announced a second prize which was decided by the organizers only. They said that there were many girls with great outfits which didn't entered the contest, so they gave their prize to such a girl. I think her outfit was amazing too, but honestly ALL outfits were amazing!!

First Winner

Second Winner

Sadly some of the brands which were announced weeks before as ruffle donations + shop stalls weren't actually there (Lady Sloth, Ophanim tights, Poppemonica berets). This were the brands I was mostly interested in xD. I guess the brands didn't ship their items in time, or they were stuck in customs.

At the end of the Tea Party I was hungry again and wanted to grab some more food. I don't know why but our table had NOTHING left, while all other tables had some food left xD. I guess we were the most hungry ones xD. So I went to the other tables to ask for more cupcakes ^_^'''''

Then was the obligatory group picture and after this, the Tea Party was officially finished!!

Some more pictures of the room:

In the evening we went to a restaurant and cocktailbar again. But we were a bit unlucky... first, we invaded a very small restaurant which didn't expected that many people, so we had to wait nearly 1 hour for our food (thought the waiter announced it at the beginning, so it was okay, and the food was delicious). And then we had to wait 1,5 hours for our cocktails! Well not all people had to wait that long, but since we were sitting at the end of the table, we were one of the last ones who got our cocktails. But nevertheless, we had enough stuff to talk about so it was ok ^_^

~*~ Pictures with watermark are from: ~*~
Me.Fotografie
Meiningen
www.MeFotografie.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/ME-Fotografie/326979571756
~*~ Thank you so much for all the wonderful pictures ~*~


Thank you for reading,
Miuko~ <3

Rothenburg Day 1 - Arrival

Hello!

This weekend I travelled to Rothenburg with several friends! We stayed there for 4 days!

We arrived on Friday afternoon in Rothenburg. Normally you need 3,5 hours by car from Bonn to Rothenburg, but we needed 6 hours. And some friends who only started their jouney 30min later from the same city and drove the same streets, needed 9 hours X_X. There was a huge construction site which caused this crazy traffic jam.

In the evening we met with other friends and went eating. We were around 15 people I think. After eating, we went drinking cocktails. First we went to the "Rock Café". It was a true Rock'n'Roll Café and they had shots with naughty names xD. It was so cute when we asked the waitress for a suggestion, and while she was a real Rock lady, she didn't wanted to say the name of a shot loudly xD

But the Rock Café didn't had a large selection of cocktails, so we went to another cocktail bar. The waitresses there were also really nice, because the cocktail bar was inside a 4* hotel (thought it wasn't one of those super-expensive hotels).

We did the same every evening! It was so awesome to spend so much time with all my friends and fellow Lolitas. It felt like a Lolita class trip xD
 
All of us have worn cute clothing, but no Lolita oufits. BUT still, so many people took pictures of us and asked us what we are wearing. And 1 week before the event, there was an article in the local newspaper, therefore many people asked us if we will go to this event. I was pretty surprised by this, does this mean Rothenburg has only 1 newspaper? xD Because many people told us about this newspaper article!!! 

The owner of our hostel cut out the newspaper article for us:

Btw, the hostel owner was the MOST AWESOME owner in the world! She was sooo nice and welcoming. She pampered all her guest like a mother xD. I would come back to Rothenburg only to visit her hostel!

In the evening we started to try on the dresses of each other! It is so much fun to try different dresses! We were 4 Lolitas in one room so we had a lot of dresses to choose from *_*. Lisa tried on my new Btssb dress and she constantly fell in love with it! So on Saturday during the Tea Party she just bought it :D (because at our hotel the internet connection was bad, so we had to do it during the Tea Party xD). I also tried on the Romantic Rose Letter special set OP.... and it was the first dress which was so overloaded with details that it was too much for me... can you believe it? A dress which is too OTT for a huge AP fan like me? I think this dress is beautiful but you can't really coordinate it in many different ways, you can only coordinate it in one way. Yes you can change your headdress, but this dress is so OTT it will always look the same. It's epic, but for me it's too epic xD.

The first day started pretty amazing, and it just got better each day :D
Thank you to all for this wonderful weekend!

Thank you for reading,
Miuko~ <3

Paris 2014 - Day 3 - Museum

On our third day in Paris we only had a Museum trip planned. But it was not a normal museum - it was a very special one!

It's called "Musée des Arts Forains" and its exhibition consists of old funfair attractions! How awesome is this ?!?!?! When you want to visit it, you have to order tickets online with credit card. But I saw some people paying in cash, so if you don't have a credit card, I suggest to drop them an e-mail and ask if you can pay by cash.

I found this museum last year when I searched for interesting stuff in Paris. When I saw the website, I fell in love with this museum! Take a look here: >> Musée des Arts Forains <<

You can only visit the museum with a guided tour, which is unfortunately in french only. It is possible to book an english tour if you come with a larger group, but since we were only 2 people, we had to stick with the french tour. However our tour guide was so nice to print out some papers with information in english! So you can still enjoy your tour.

I was surprised that I understood quite a lot of the french from our tour guide. This gave me motivation to refresh my french skills, because I'm pretty sure that this wasn't the last time I visited Paris ^_^

Now some pictures of this wonderful museum!

The entrace area~

The first hall we visited~

In this museum you can actually use some of the attractions! The first one was a carussel, inspired by venetian gondoliers.

 A stage - you can book this museum for events too ^_^

Another stage~

Another attraction we could play with~

Between the exhibition halls is a street with chandeliers hanging in the trees *_*

 They had some really odd exhibits Ô_o

And now my favourite exhibits: the carousels!!!

Did you know that they often had horse carousels because only rich people could afford horses? This was the only chance for 'normal' people to ride a horse in their whole life!

Yes this is a bycicle carousel! The owners of funfairs often used the newest inventions for the attractions, so this carousel was for many people the first chance in their life to ride a bycicle! And this was also the first time that they could experience speed. Because this carousel can go up to 60 km/h, and back then there existed no cars or other things that could go so fast! I could even experience this myself... we were also allowed to use this carousel, and I got really scared when it was at full speed ^^''''
BUT the most interesting fact might be that this carousel works without electricity!! That means it only works when all people actually use the pedals to make it move, just like real bycicles!

Pretty wall decoration - the hall museum had wonderful decoration everywhere!

I wish I could show you more pictures, but the light was really bad for cameras and many pictures turned out blurry. After 1-1.5 hours the tour was over. Our tour guide said that we only saw a small part of the whole collection, there is much more stuff stored in other halls. This museum is a private museum and all this stuff belongs to only one person, can you believe it??

 All in all this museum was really nice, althought I think the entry fee could be a bit lower. A ticket costs 17€ and when you don't understand french, it could be a bit boring. And for this price I want to see more stuff. But it was really great that we could use all the carousels and some of the games. And we also got to hear some fun fair music instrument machines (I don't know a better name for them xD), and some of the information is really interesting to hear!

~*~*~*~*~*~

After the museum we went to Axes Femme, because when we went there on our first day in Paris, they just got delivered some huge packages with clothes, and later they wrote on their Facebook page that they got more new stuff for Japan Expo, which will be also on Sale! So I wanted to see the new stuff and it was a good decision, I bought the long dress I already showed you in my earlier post :)

After this we went again to AP, but the shop was already very empty. We actually only went there to see how empty the store was xD. 

(Just as a side note, we were there the last time on Thursday afternoon, but I saw pictures on Facebook that they put out 2 brand new dresses at the weekend, "Lucienne Dream" which officially was released 1 week later after the Paris store closed, and "Cameo Window Paris", which isn't even released now!! But when I was in Paris 2013 they also had their new "Paris Window" print for sale there, even if it wasn't released yet in Japan!)

After this we went to Laduree. Usually I always buy Macarons at Laduree when I'm in Paris because I think they have the best ones in the world, but I only had a few Euros left and I wanted to buy some lunch ^^''', so only Ami bought macarons. 

Even if we had 3 hours left until our train would arrive, we still went back to our hotel because it was sooo hot that we hadn't any motivation to do something else. So we stayed over 1 hour in the hotel lobby and relaxed in their comfy sofas. But the guy from the reception was somewhat strange... first he was really nice, he brought us some cold fruits. And I think he was really bored so he came over and wanted to talk to us but with his broken english we couldn't really started to talk. But then he started to look at us all the time and smiled, like he wanted "something" from us. And later when I walked past him on the way to my luggage, he whispered to me "You are beautiful" xDDDDD. I really don't want to know what he was thinking xD. But I was happy that we directly left after this xD.

So yeah that was the last post about Paris. Just as a side note, our hotel was in the middle of the wedding shop street for "non-french" people. There were literally at least 60 shops selling wedding dresses, ball gowns, suits or wedding decoration. Next time I will plan more time to check out the decoration shops because they had some really awesome cheap stuff there!

(But on the down-side it was full of... those people. I don't recommend getting a hotel near Sacre-Coeur.)

Thank you for reading,
Miuko~ <3

Paris 2014 - Day 2 - Fashion Walk and Tea Party

Our second day in Paris started quite lazy. I woke up at 8 a.m. and couldn't sleep anymore so I started to try several hairstyles. In the end I needed 3 hours to decide and make my final hairstyle X_X. So even if I started early, Ami and me left our hotel at 13:00h. But we still had plenty of time because the Fashion Walk only started at 15:10h, so we went to the Angelic Pretty store again and then to a small park to take pictures.

After taking pictures in the park, we went to the Gallerie Vivienne, which was the starting point of the Fashion Walk. It was also the place of the Putumayo Tea Party. When we arrived, we saw the Tea Party because they were sitting in the hallway of the Gallerie. It looked like there were many people attending the Putumayo Tea Party, but later one girl told me that they were only 5 (!!!) guests! There were more models and Putumayo staff then guests! Can you belive it, they had a very special and personal Tea Party with Misako Aoki. Now I regret it so much that I didn't attended the Putumayo TP, I even ordered a ticket but I cancelled it later because I thought it was too expensive to pay 40€ for the Putumayo TP and 60€ for the Angelic Pretty TP, which is 100€ just for 4,5 hours of TP.

We met Rosalynn in the Gallerie! She was so nice to take a picture of us, thank you!

But when it came closer to 15:00h, more and more Lolitas arrived and I was surprised how many Lolitas were there which I know personally or which I at least saw at other Lolita events. I was sooo happy to meet all the lovely Lolitas and I also started to talk with Lolitas I didn't knew before. It was no problem because everyone was very friendly and open to meet other people. I was very impressed how nice all the girls were to each other, all of them giving compliments, taking pictures and talking with each other, so it was quite a special atmosphere and a special moment for me.

Also the whole Angelic Pretty staff came to the Fashion Walk (maybe they were also at the Putumayo TP? I don't know). It was really nice to see how Maki and Asuka greeted everyone and were really engaged in taking pictures with everyone. Generally, especially Maki and Mrs. Honda (the owner of AP) always ask for pictures and take pictures of everyone and everything!

~*~ FASHION WALK ~*~

Around 60 people were attending the Fashion Walk, most of them dressed in Angelic Pretty, because they were all attending the AP Tea Party later or just bought some new clothes at the Angelic Pretty Pop-up store.

When the Fashion Walk started, some japanese staff from Putumayo were telling everyone that we would start to walk now. But not many people heard it in the first place, so when Ami and me started walking, we were at the very front of the walk, directly behind Misako Aoki! But honestly we were just walking around Paris so it kind of didn't really felt special that we were walking with Misako Aoki ^^'''' Because we didn't talked with her or took pictures or anything, just walking behind her.

Generally there were a lot of (professional) photographers and also a camera team. We stopped 3 times to take a group picture. The first one was in a small park, the second in a small passage and the last one in front of the famous Opéra! You will not believe how many people photographed us in front of the Opéra. It is a famous tourist spot so there were a lot of people, so it was hard to escape from all the tourists who wanted to take a picture with us xD

All in all it was quite funny to walk around Paris with a horde of Lolitas, thought the best thing was definitly that I could talk to many Lolitas. At the end I also could finally take a picture with Misako Aoki <3

 ~*~ TEA PARTY ~*~

The fashion walk should take 30 minutes, so originally we should have 1 hour for finding the place of the AP TP. But when we looked at our watch after the Fashion Walk, we only had 15 minutes!!! The Opéra is in the middle of a huge crossing with 7 streets, so Ami and me didn't found the right street. But luckily we found some french Lolitas who also wanted to attend the TP and they had google maps on their mobile phone, so we tried to find the way together. But we went in the wrong direction, so we only had 5 more minutes!! The french Lolitas suggested to take a cab and luckily there was one parking just next to us, so we asked him if he could ride us to the Bristol Hotel (the place of the TP) and he said yes and it will only take 5 minutes.
So we took the cab, but when he started to drive, he drove in a complete different direction from what we thought where the hotel was. First, I thought that we really walked in the wrong direction, but one day later I walked the same street with Ami again because we wanted to go to a shop there, and we found out that the cab driver drove some extra streets to make more money!!! He was only 2 corners away from the Hotel -.- But luckily we didn't came too late, only 2 minutes, but the TP didn't started yet because there was still a queue in front of the room, because they checked the Tea Party tickets of everyone and there were around 100 Lolitas attending!

Number 4 means I was the 4th person who wrote AP an e-mail to reserve a ticket *_*

After we entered the room, we had to find a table. We joint a table with a girl from Austria and from France. It was funny because Ami and me thought that we were the only german-speaking people there, but suddenly the austrian Lolita started to talk to us in german. What a coincidence that we chose exactly this table!

Every table was arranged like this - with a plate of sandwiches and cake and rose petals

Our table - the pink girl on the left is the austrian Lolita, and the two in the middle are the french Lolitas who helped us to find the way to the Tea Party.

In the background you can also see Misako Aoki and the Putumayo staff. They joined the Tea Party too!

While entering, we directly recognized some women who didn't fit to the Tea Party. There were some old ladies at one table and younger women at two other tables, all looking snobby and dressed in typical snobby clothes. Everyone was questioning why they were at the TP, but later I asked one of the older ladies and she told me that they are from a university for fashion & marketing in California and they got invited by Angelic Pretty to the Tea Party. The older ladies were the proferssors and the younger ones their students. And she told me that they have a branch in San Francisco with students who wear Angelic Pretty.
But they didn't stayed until the end, they left within the first hour of the Tea Party.

Then, Maki and Asuka started the Tea Party. They greeted everyone and explained that there will be an outfit contest and a raffle. Everyone was given a paper brooch with a number for the outfit contest, and we should vote the outfit we liked the most.

Then it was time for the food! They had étagères with macarons, tiny cakes and sandwiches. But there were not many macarons and cakes! If you weren't fast enough you probably couldn't grab one of the macarons or the delicious lemon mini-cakes. But there were enough sandwiches to fill your body. At this point I was asking myself why they only ordered such a small amount of food, but later they brought two giant cakes, so I got my answer xD

After grabbing some food, it was time to take pictures and to talk to other people. Generally during the whole Tea Party, everyone was moving around for taking pictures or talking, nearly nobody was sitting in their chairs.

The glamorous room - you really felt like a princess here!

Because Maki and Asuka said at the beginning, that they hope to talk to us a lot, I went to both of them to ask a question. First I went to Asuka, but she nearly speaks no english, so when I asked her "What is your favourite dress?" she understood "This is my favourite dress", so she answered with "Oh thank you" xD. Then I went to Maki, she speaks better english. I asked the same question, but she couldn't decide for her favourite dress and said, that currently it is the dress she is wearing (honestly I expected the answer because they are always saying this ~_~). When I asked her how many dresses she owns, she said "Oooh hmmm.... many!". She also said that all her dresses are from AP. Then she also asked us how many dresses we own from AP and where we buy our dresses. Maki is really cute and I like that she understands english a bit so you can actually talk to her!

In the middle of the Tea Party, Asuka started to collect the votes for the outfit contest. She had a very cute box with Angelic Pretty print! How awesome is this!

Suddenly, the hotel staff was bringing 2 giant cakes! They brought a chocolate cake and a strawberry cake. The chocolate cake had glitter and also real gold on it! I felt so rich for 1 minute eating this cake xD. If you want to know, gold tastes very neutral. It just looks pretty and luxurious ^-^ They also served the cake with sauce... I never ate cake like this but it was a nice addition :)

 The decoration was made from sugar and I think the pictures were printed on sugar plates too!

At the end of the Tea Party was the ruffle. My heart started beating so fast because I desperately wanted to win something. And with desperately I mean really really desperately. I really wanted one of those chocolate bags, I saw them in the online store and fell in love with them but they were too expensive for me. But unfortunately I didn't won anything in the ruffle and I was so sad and disappointed. I know it's stupid to be sad because of something like that ;__; I shouldn't have thought so much about the prizes then I wouldn't be so sad about it.
But everyone who didn't won something during the raffle, got a poster. So nobody was left completely empty-handed.

Raffle prices - the dark blue box, the pink cup & saucer and the drawing were the prizes for the outfit contest

After the ruffle followed the announcement of the winners of the outfit contest, and directly after this was the group picture.

 Winner Outfit contest - Credit by Japan-In-Depth

 Credit by Tokyo Crazy Kawaii

Then Maki and Asuka officially said good-bye and finished the event. A nice girl of the Angelic Pretty staff gave everyone a present at the exit. It was a small pochette with Fantasy Theater print.

Yes there is a calendar on the poster...

The card on the left is the other side of the invitation - just wanted to show it ^^

All in all it was a great event, and I hope they will come back next year and make a Tea Party again!!! I'm a huge fan of Angelic Pretty and Maki & Asuka, and during the Tea Party I really felt like a princess. I met a girl at the Fashion Walk and she told me that she doesn't wear Lolita anymore, but she borrowed an outfit from a friend because she wanted to join the Tea Party. I can completely understand why and I would do the same too if I would leave Lolita (but of course I won't anytime soon ^^).

Thank you for reading,
Miuko