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[MELBOURNE] oo6. 65. DEGREES CAFE
![[MELBOURNE] oo6. 65. DEGREES CAFE](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/20140806-195928-71968866.jpg?w=1024)
65 Degrees Cafe is a retail outlet for Gridlock Coffee specialty coffee roasters – masters of latte art and which offers a vast range of blends and single origin coffee beans. I wasn’t there for coffee, though, as I’ve only recently experienced some nasty side effects of caffeine overdose. Winter in Melbourne has its way…
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[MELBOURNE] oo5. THE LEAGUE OF HONEST COFFEE
![[MELBOURNE] oo5. THE LEAGUE OF HONEST COFFEE](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/20140806-150921-54561935.jpg?w=1024)
Darned long walk in the cold but all’s good after a cuppa flat white from Melbourne’s very own The League of Honest Coffee. Waking up from a 3 hour nap straight off a flight from Singapore to Melbourne (during which there’s no rest at all), the caffeine hit was my fire-place in subzero winter. Australia…
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[MELBOURNE] oo4. WINTER SNAPSHOTS
![[MELBOURNE] oo4. WINTER SNAPSHOTS](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/20140806-203339-74019708.jpg?w=1024)
What’s great in Melbourne, besides taking photos with koala bears and trying not to get ass-kicked by kangaroos in their local zoos? . Just walk around the central business district and you’ll be surprised by all kinds of quirky finds. Hipster cafes, graffitied streets, an alley dedicated to pub-crawlers, giant chess pieces for challenging an opponent you’ve…
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[ROME] A NIGHT AT THE VATICAN
![[ROME] A NIGHT AT THE VATICAN](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/p1050130.jpg?w=1024)
Probably the only time you can catch the night scene outside St Peter’s Square is if you spend the night at Vatican City, or if you’re reading this as I’m about to show you a couple of my night scene captures. Outside St Peter’s Basilica on the day we arrived, there was a huge preparation…
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[ROME] 10 SNAPSHOTS OF VATICAN CITY
![[ROME] 10 SNAPSHOTS OF VATICAN CITY](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/p1050095.jpg?w=1024)
Bringing to you a quick showcase of the world’s smallest independent state – all 109 acres (44 hectares) around St. Peter’s Basilica and the palace of the Vatican. In and around are beautifully preserved cultural sites, lush green gardens, and museums which feature some of the world’s most famous sculptures and paintings. Home to architectural…
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[ROME] VATICAN CITY – A VIEW FROM THE TOP
![[ROME] VATICAN CITY – A VIEW FROM THE TOP](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1050003.jpg?w=1024)
The view from the top of Vatican City’s St Peter’s Basilica was exhilarating, breathtaking, and worth the claustrophobia-inducing flight of stairs we had to take to the top. Once in your life, or perhaps through somebody else’s eyes, you should see Vatican City from its proudest heights. Here are some pictures I snapped, enjoy! xoxo, Viktoria…
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[ROME] ST PETER’S BASILICA
![[ROME] ST PETER’S BASILICA](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040920.jpg?w=1024)
We were both blessed and unlucky to have arrived in Vatican City the day before a huge and important event for the Catholic Church. Many parts of the basilica were closed due to preparations for mass. On the upside, we got to witness the procession which arrived to prep the church up. There were massive…
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[ROME] LIVING, BREATHING ART
![[ROME] LIVING, BREATHING ART](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040856.jpg?w=1024)
Ancient art, very much still alive today. The pure gold in reflecting sun’s rays ignites a sense of silent power that only a calm basilica would bring. Mass in this majestic interior must have been a truly empowering and significant event. Am amazed at how this Panasonic Lumix GF6 of mine was able to capture…
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COLD BLUE STEEL AND SWEET FIRE
A little sneak of what I did. Anybody knows this old Joni Mitchell song? “Come with me I know the way” she says “It’s down, down, down the dark ladder” xoxo, Viktoria Jean
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[ROME] INNER TRIMMINGS OF THE VATICAN CITY
![[ROME] INNER TRIMMINGS OF THE VATICAN CITY](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040831.jpg?w=1024)
Be amazed at what human beings have achieved. Some dedicate their lives to creating art – intricate gold and bronze details adorn every inch of the ceiling at the St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. How did they get there, you ask. How did the people of the past achieve incredible feats like these. Patience, loads…
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Reflections – On Life’s New Undertakings
For the best part of 2014, I thought my gap year was turning into a gap lifetime. In 2013 my bachelor’s degree in psychology was fresh meat from the chopping block, and in 2014 I’m sitting on decaying sheets of qualification, swatting at hungry flies. In a world where sitting on your laurels is success (and causatively, happiness)’s greatest nemesis, hitting…
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[ROME] THE VATICAN CITY
![[ROME] THE VATICAN CITY](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040822.jpg?w=1024)
We arrived, early summer morning, at the smallest internationally recognised independent state in the world! Dan Brown aficionados would undoubtedly link Vatican City to Angels and Demons, in which our all-time favourite Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon fights to stop the Illuminati from destroying Vatican City with the newly discovered antimatter. I loved every sequel, but Angels and Demons…
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[ROME] GRAN CAFFE ROMA
![[ROME] GRAN CAFFE ROMA](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040794.jpg?w=1024)
Breakfast was pepperoni and salami pizza at the Gran Caffe Roma via Vittorio Veneto in Rome, Italy. Alfresco dining in the morning summer breeze gave us plenty of room for people-watching, which brings me to remembering the blatant stares we’d throughout our journey received from patrons of pavement cafes and restaurants. Sometimes I wonder if we’re…
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[ROME] THE COLOSSEUM
![[ROME] THE COLOSSEUM](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040782.jpg?w=1024)
Rome was not built in a day. Pardon the cliche but it’s all I could think about right here and right now. The Colosseum is the icon of Roman masculinity being the site of many heroic battles fought within its colossal proportions. I’ve had the nagging suspicion that the Colosseum’s root word comes from Colossus,…
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[ROME] IN ALL ITS RUINED BEAUTY
![[ROME] IN ALL ITS RUINED BEAUTY](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p1040617.jpg?w=1024)
What everyone should love about Rome: its historic ruins and scatters of exquisite shambles. Much of this city appears discarded – as if picked apart by fickle historians and deemed unworthy of more than an afterthought. Centuries of time gone by lay preserved in these archived sites, untouched by restoration, that are as common in…
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[ROME] PIAZZA DEL POPOLO
![[ROME] PIAZZA DEL POPOLO](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20140727-155212-57132625.jpg?w=1024)
Flanked by the Via Flaminia, Piazza del Popolo was an important entry point to Rome’s city centre for travellers entering the city via the Adriatic Coast. Today, the piazza still hums with a steady stream of travellers eager to check this off their travel itinerary. We took mandatory shots with Rome’s iconic obelisk which was initially erected to…
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[ROME] THE SPANISH STEPS
![[ROME] THE SPANISH STEPS](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20140727-155528-57328731.jpg?w=1024)
We took the best part of an hour to conquer the celebrated Piazza di Spagna, otherwise more fondly known as the Spanish Steps, which rises up towards the Church of Trinità dei Monti. Summer was shrouding us all in killer heatwaves. Nevertheless we managed to revel in the refined, eighteenth century atmosphere, once home to…
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[ROME] THE PANTHEON
![[ROME] THE PANTHEON](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20140727-154811-56891549.jpg?w=1024)
Let there be light! Through this massively gaping hole, summer was infiltrating the cool granite dome. Indeed, you haven’t seen Rome if you’ve never been to the Pantheon. This gaping hole right at the center of the majestic relic is what we call the oculus at the dome’s apex, which allows the only natural sources…
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[ROME] PIAZZA NAVONA
![[ROME] PIAZZA NAVONA](https://viktoriajean.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20140727-154029-56429017.jpg?w=1024)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi or Fountain of the Four Rivers (1651), topped by the Obelisk of Domitian, brought to Rome in pieces from the Circus of Maxentius. Still pretty much awed by the beauty that lay in ruins all over Rome, scattered amongst the masterpieces that bring in the bulk of the…
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cracked perfection
“I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night.…
Viktoria Jean
Writer
Viktoria Jean 