In Search of Glamour: Starting at Home

Over the last couple of months, setting up my home in a new town (I am really a feminist I promise!) has brought me endless joy and satisfaction. In a town full of different - or weird - things, people and ways of living, my own home is one place where I can ensure class and a relaxed, refined atmosphere (all on a budget, of course). I can set the mood with jazz or a swingtime music channel, light some candles and be at home. A home on the other side of the world. I never thought I'd see the day where I paged through more house & home magazines than fashion ones! A temporary lapse. Sitting in my flat (or condo - new word for me!) I could be anywhere in the world.

Favorites for getting the most for your money: Ikea, Home Sense, Home Outfitters, Wal-Mart (don't laugh - one just has to be really selective to find good deals!) and Pier One Imports (a bit more expensive but stacked full of great investment pieces that you won't find anywhere else).

Restaurant Review: Saltlik Banff

Part of a unique chain that owns branches in Calgary and Vancouver, Saltlik definitely puts the cool in Canadian. Celebrating instead of ignoring Canadian culture, the Saltlik bar and restuarant in Banff is full of wood, leather, modern graphic design and chic touches such as the wooden elk in a mountie uniform. The menu is comprehensive and despite having no mint for mojitos (hey - at least they had heard of them!) they did manage to rustle me up some vodka and lime, the first establishment in Canada in which I've actually found lime cordial. Service was great, although in their downtimes most of the younger waitresses seemed to be occupying the manager's lap, and while not busy (late Sunday night) the other patrons looked urbane, up-market and city-bred. A good place for an early dinner or late night drink, I wouldn't hesitate to visit again.

Glamour in the Mountains

It is just as well for us that the nature of fashion takes one of the best outdoor regions in the world and turns them into hip-happening places to go, full of small town wonders that make you feel like you are in a shrunken (but awesome) metropolis - think St Barts. Wonderful hubby treated me, and himself of course, to a luxury weekend in the Canadian Rockies. I expected beautiful scenery and was not disappointed, and also luxury accomodation (will always and forever love Fairmont Hotels - check out www.fairmont.com). But we got so much more. The town of Jasper is not so fabulous, could in fact be so much cooler. But drive five minutes to Jasper Park Lodge which looks out over a turqoise lake and snowy peaks, and you can enjoy a world-class cocktail at a variety of bars, eat great steak or seafood at your choice of five restaurants and shop for international brands at bloody awfully priced boutiques. Yay!! The next day took us through the Icefields Parkway - heralded as the most beautiful mountain pass in the world - and into Banff. I. want. to. live. there. Forever. Banff is a ski town, where the buildings are quaint and the bars are full of drunk students. But more than that, there are organic bakeries and coffee houses, up-market Canadian styled bars (proving that this is not a contradiction), a Louis Voitton shop and beautiful boutique hotels. We stayed at the Fairmont Banff Springs which is a gorgeous Scottish castle-inspired building built in 1889 - a veritable maze of corridors all leading to tucked away restaurants and bars.

Another thing we really enjoyed about our mini-break (love to hate that term!) was the people we met. Our horizons were broadened from the mainly trailer-park inbred population of our own small town to tourists and travellers from around the world. We met the eccentric, the common, the fabulous and the pretty. Needless to say, this won't be our last trip into the mountains - scenery and civilization!

Restaurant Review: Hundred Bar and Kitchen

A discovery made on girls' night in Edmonton:

Set in the ground floor of an old apartment building in central Edmonton, Hundred Bar and Kitchen makes a good impression as soon as one walks in. The decor is rich and beautiful, old baroque style with oversized chandeliers, sumptous velvet and rich colours. The staff are friendly and well presented, a breath of fresh city air after the confines of a small town. The girls had cocktails (a few too many in the name of reasearch) most of which were good, bar the mojitos which were amazing. By the time we ordered food no one was really hungry but I can definitely recommend the goats cheese main - rich and melting! A tour around the kitchens (clean, I promise) and a visit to the dj booth rounded off a lovely evening. The venue is perfect both for parties (or girls' nights!) and romantic dinners - I'll definitely be back with my man.

The Ups and Downs of Glamour in a Small Town

Up 1. There aren't many classy girls here - so moi looks fab even when she doesn't.

Down 1. Having so much blah around is incentive to drop standards.


Up 2. I could make my millions as a stylist here.

Down 2. I don't think anyone really wants to improve, or even sees a problem in living in fugly, grey stretch pants.


Up 3. People stare like you're something because even at your most casual, you tend to look really dressed up.

Down 3. They also seem to think moi is a tart just for wearing high heels with a skirt. Can you imagine what some of my more eccentric outfits might do to them?

What is Canada, anyway?

What do people think of when Canada is mentioned? Not much apparently, from the indication of their glazed-over eyes. An extension of America? With a bit of the UK and French culture in the mix, but really a humongous and barren state of the good ol' US of A. A place where millions of people are scattered (90%) within 100 miles of the American border, and believe me not just because of the cold. A place where the cities are nice, but not that big. Or famous. And there's not that many of them. A nice place that has problems like all countries but doesn't seem to do much bad on the news, or make the news very much at all. But hey, who wants to be nice these days?

Yeah, I hear you say, so why move there? Well first of all I don't like to call it a move, thank you very much. A temporary relocation is what I prefer, although that gets a little long in conversation. Secondly, it happened for very good reasons. Or so we thought at the time. Reasons like financial security (uh-huh - the polite way of saying moolah), travel and adventure. With a time limit of 24 months - whether minimum or maximum remains to be seen.

I won't bother telling you the name of our town. You won't know it, really you won't. But I will tell you that it is a lot like hundreds of others. Small but with all the facilities that people here think essential, ugly but safe, clean most of the year round. Slap bang in the middle of Alberta which is slap bang in the middle of the country. Oh yeah, and a couple of hours drive from Edmonton, my closest city for a long time which at least houses the biggest mall in the world. I'm still trying to find the coffee shops, art galleries, intimate bistros and up-market boutiques.

If Only...

Life really was a bit more like Sex and the City. I suppose that it must be for some people, otherwise we probably wouldn't be as obsessed. Great jobs with really great pay, apartments in Manhattan (try Brooklyn for Miranda) and Glamour. With that capital G. And somehow, everything always turns out alright. It's comforting that while NY has a shortage of eligable men, there are some in every episode and that while some outfits are please-don't-put-that-on-my-dead-body, they are all SATCfabulous (officially now a word).

But the rest of us can only try to achieve that level of glamour, fufillment and style. Fun, but hard at the best of times, try moving from a big city that everybody's heard of to a town that people living 100 miles away don't even know about. More about that later.