In a big country dreams stay with you...

Just some final inspiration from Poland before I move on to cover London...

Krakow.

 

 

Warsaw.

 

Gdansk.

 

Traveling to new places always recharges my creative batteries. I highly recommend it :-)

The Kids Are Alright

Some final inspiration from Poland. While staying in Krakow, we came across some great places like Wodka and Camelot, and I became obsessed with the young hipster vibe at Pijalnia Wodki I Piwa next door to Camelot.

What's not to love? Newsprint on the walls, Bauhaus-style barstools, cheap prices, vintage Polish movies playing on TVs:

But then I found out it was a chain, with several more locations in Warsaw. D'oh!

I wondered if the hipster kids knew. I'm sure they did. Sigh. Thanks for making me feel old...

Each morning I wake up, before I put on my makeup...

Recounting my travels in a somewhat backwards way, I wanted to recap another interesting design inspiration from Gdansk (as well as parts of Warsaw too.)

Both Warsaw and Gdansk were bombed during the war and had to be re-constructed. They paid a lot of attention to detail to recreate the Old Town look, and after 60 or so years they look pretty authentic. (I'm afraid of how Disneyland/Westworld it might have all looked right after they rebuilt everything in the '50s.)

Something I saw that could be applied to more modern buildings Stateside is an exterior trompe l'oeil treatment. Basically, if you don't have any interesting architectural details to the outside of your space, why not fake it?

I found these pretty good examples:

And of course, you could have some fun inside too ;-)

More next week!