Lisbon shopping guide: hide and chic - Daily Telegraph
On Rua do Loreto, I step inside the wood-panelled Casa das Velas do Loreto (in the same family since 1789) and find tall, honey-scented ecclesiastical candles for £15. At A Vida Portuguesa, on Rua Anchieta, my heart quickens at the fine Portuguese soaps and beautifully-packaged tinned sardines. Junk stalls in the Estrela park yield some irresistibly touching, framed black-and-white family photographs from the 1930s, costing a few euros each. Exploring the new waterfront design area, Santos, provides a satisfying few hours.
Back on Rossio, at the the 120-year-old Chapelaria Azevedo Rua, I finger a handmade man's fedora for £57 – the double of one I swear I saw on Jermyn Street at £120. I postpone checking out handmade riding boots at Vitorino de Sousa on Rua dos Correeiros. And it is just as well that, before I hit the antique shops of Rua de São Bento, I meet the art-restorer owner of the new Palacete Chafariz del Rei boutique hotel, a 1906 mansion he renovated. "Lisbon has great antique stores," he says, "but so does Oporto – and 50 per cent cheaper." So it's advisable to take a large suitcase there? "A van!" he says with a grin, and points to a beautiful 1920s leather sofa and chair bought for £170.
How to do it
When to go
Any time, but May is best: it's not too hot, the purple jacaranda is in blossom, and you can take a 30-minute train ride to the beaches at Cascais – home now to the Casa das Histórias, showing the surrealist work of Portugal's brilliant Paula Rego. Bear in mind that Sunday is quiet; only museums open.
Where to stay
On the outskirts, the Lapa Palace and Pestana Palace hotels are very grand, but all the chic new spots are central: LX Boutique, Inspira Santa Marta and, just off Rossio, the Altis Avenida (00 351 29 172 4307, portugal-live.net; rooms from £115), with young staff, black-carpeted rooms, a spa, and a seventh-floor roof terrace brasserie. For more information, see visitlisboa.com and flytap.com
What to do
Pack flat shoes: you will walk a lot. On arrival, get the Convida Lisboa shopping guides, free at all hotels, and a three-day Lisboa Card (£28) for the trams, Metro and buses. In bustling Baixa, see the new Mude design museum (mude.pt); in Chiado, old shops; in Principe Real, new design stores, cool cafés such as Orpheu, and boutiques such as Kolovrat (lidijakolovrat.org) at Rua Dom Pedro V 79, for witty printed silk scarves and spider-web silver necklaces costing £330. Go to Bairro Alto at night, for the bars, and medieval Alfama for almost hilariously mournful fado. Hottest area: waterfront, ex-industrial Santos, buzzing with lifestyle stores, bars and restaurants; see LX Factory (lxfactory.com) and Ler (lerdevagar.com).
Where to eat and drink
Have cocktails at new, glass-walled Le Chat (00 351 91 779 7155) at Jardim 9 de Abril. Have dinner at rough-chic 560 (00 351 21 346 8317, restaurante560.com) at Rua das Gáveas 78: wild mushrooms in Azores cheese, swordfish with banana, then pineapple carpaccio with coriander sauce. Finish at the new Sol e Pesca bar (00 351 21 346 7203) at Rua Nova do Carvalho 44.
Eurozone crisis could have silver lining for savings, says Nationwide - Daily Mirror
THE euro crisis could trigger a bonanza for savers – but with a sting in the tail for borrowers, Britain’s biggest building society has claimed.
The Nationwide added to warnings that the mounting turmoil could force up wholesale funding costs.
If that happens, banks would try getting more money from retail deposits – which would push up savings rates.
Chris Rhodes, the mutual’s head of products and marketing, explained: “So far it has had no impact on our wholesale funding costs or our cost of retail savings, but it clearly could.
“If the cost of funds rose because of what is going on in the eurozone, savers would get better rates. Clearly, new borrowers will pay the price for that.”
Nationwide gets 75% of its funding from retail deposits and the rest from wholesale markets.
The mutual has 10.5million savers and around three million borrowers. But with £8,000 in a typical savings account and an average mortgage balance of £100,000, a rate rise would hit borrowers hard.
The claim came as Nationwide revealed profits tumbled 36% to £203million after it was hit with a number of costs, including £75m for a bank levy and its contribution to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. On an underlying basis, profits were up 10% £304m. Nationwide trounced rivals on mortgage lending which surged 44% to £18.4billion, while the market was up just 5%. Lending to first-time buyers rose 9% to 24,000.
About 700,000 mortgage borrowers who are on its base mortgage rate – which is pegged at 2% above the Bank of England’s base rate – saved £750m last year, or £1,000 each, the mutual said.
But put another way, that’s £750m extra it could have earned if it was able to charge those borrowers the market average rate. Rhodes admitted: “That commitment is the key reason why Nationwide’s margin is a lot lower.”
The mutual also attracted a stampede of new savers, with deposits rocketing 67% to £1bn. And it jacked-up its payment protection insurance compensation bill from just £16m to £121m.
Fantasicakes Offers Wholesale Bakery Goods and Pastries to Businesses across America - PRWeb
Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake
(PRWEB) May 23, 2012
Fantasicakes has been offering its full product line to its local wholesale customers in Los Angeles area for years. These include country clubs, high end catering companies and restaurants, retailers, cafes, food markets, banquet hall facilities, corporate cafeterias, and coffee shops. Fantasicakes is now offering its wholesale bakery goods to nationwide buyers and wholesale customers.
Our gourmet Coffee Cakes, Bundt cakes, and Tarts are currently available for nationwide delivery. There is a variety of great flavors to choose from. Our coffee cakes come in seven flavors: Cinnamon, Cinnamon Walnut, Pecan Cinnamon, Apple Cinnamon, Chocolate Chip, Marble, and Chocolate Mocha. We offer our Bundt Cakes in eight different varieties: Triple Chocolate, Red Velvet, Rum, Chocolate Rum, Lemon, Orange, Blueberry, and Walnut Raisin. Our Tarts come in five flavors: Apple, Apricot, Blueberry, Cherry, and Raspberry. All our products are available for mail order online at Fantasicakes.com. Our cakes and tarts are made fresh everyday with only the finest gourmet ingredients available in the market. The result is the most flavorful Bundt cakes, coffee cakes, and tarts you will ever have the pleasure of tasting. Visit fantasicakes.com today to view all of our wholesale pastries and bakery goods.
"Our products are very well suited for bulk purchase by culinary distributors, gourmet food online stores, online marketplaces, wholesale clubs, and membership clubs." Van Keshish, owner of Fantasicakes, said. "We can drop ship our cakes and tarts for our wholesale customers, or we can do private label and ship them to their retail customers in individual packages, therefore eliminating the need for storing, wrapping, packing, and shipping hundreds or even thousands of items. Based on the order volume we offer special discounted prices for our wholesale customers."
About Fantasicakes:
Founded by Van Keshish, Fantasicakes began as a pastry shop in the Los Angeles area, supplying pastries and bakery shop goods to corporate and celebrity events, as well as local restaurants. Fantasicakes pastries are individually and carefully handcrafted using the finest gourmet ingredients. The fascinating designs and exquisite flavors of Fantasicakes creations enhance the quality and beauty of the events they are served at, leaving a lasting impression. "When I began Fantasicakes, we started out by catering corporate and celebrity events, as well as supplying local restaurants with our distinguished selection of pastries," Van Keshish, owner of FantasiCakes, said. As the bakery business grew, Keshish looked for new ways to expand. Finding the offerings of other online pastry shops lacking, Keshish brought Fantasicakes online for everyone to enjoy their mail order cakes and tarts anywhere in the United States. Fantasicakes is now offering its wholesale bakery goods to nationwide buyers and wholesale customers. Visit our website and simply fill out the wholesale request form for more information regarding wholesale prices and free product samples shipped to your store!
For more information, visit http://www.fantasicakes.com
Or click here to view our wholesale product request form
Clip joint: Shopping malls - The Guardian
This week's Clip joint is by Martyn Conterio. Think you can do better? If you've got an idea for a future Clip joint, send a message to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
The shopping mall on screen: where bland commercialism meets high drama. Over the past 40 years, cinema has used this environment for all sorts of strange and unusual scenarios, ranging from Woody Allen comedies to zombie sagas. A major lure for film-makers and producers is the salient matter of dispensing with constructing an expensive set – there's already one there.
That Anywheresville quality to shopping-mall interiors lends various films a universal feel. Don't all malls look basically the same on the inside, dominated by bright lighting, displays, food courts, neat rows of shops, fountains and sculptures? Almost naturally, American movie-makers have utilised the mall for many, often violent, cinematic ventures.
1. Dawn of the Dead
When there's no more room in hell, the dead will go shopping. (That's not the exact quote, but you get the idea.) George A Romero's use of the mall provided keen symbolism and pointed comments on rampant consumerism in western societies. The zombies, with their reanimated brains carrying vague traces of memory recall, continue a sorry semblance of their previous lives when not attracted to chomping on any survivors that cross their path. "They're after the place. They don't know why, they just remember," says Peter. "Remember that they want to be in here," he adds, noting the tragedy of the living and the walking dead alike.
2. Jackie Brown
This scene in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown works as a joke with a macabre punch-line. The stereotypical male who loathes shopping, forgets where he's parked the car and puts up with a teasing partner is something many can relate to. At the very start, the couple appear like any other bickering pair, but dumb lug Louis (Robert De Niro) finally snaps and shoots Melanie (Bridget Fonda) in cold blood, in the parking lot, demonstrating how psychologically threatening the mall can be. Tarantino shot this at Del Amo Fashion Center in California, once the biggest mall in the world.
3. Mallrats
Kevin Smith's second feature cemented Jay and Silent Bob as movie icons. The mall here represents a cultural institution where "everybody knows your name", as it were. It's the perfect setting for a farcical teen movie (even if the characters are in their twenties). Jay and Silent Bob, those adorable skeevy stoners, are reintroduced after their appearance in Clerks outside a pet store: Jay dances and checks out the ladies none-too-subtly, while Silent Bob attempts the famous Jedi mind trick. Brodie and TS, the film's heroes, want the pair's help in sabotaging a dating game show. "We were gonna do that anyway," Jay says. Hanging out with total losers never seemed like so much fun.
4. Chopping Mall
The Roger Corman-produced Chopping Mall ("Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg") is an ultra-schlocky take on what can happen when security robots short-circuit and go on the rampage. Originally released as Killbots, one of the film's "highlights" features a young girl being chased down by a robot and shot in the head. The robot on wheels is naff, the effects rubbish, the scream rather admirable. Chopping Mall is a trashy hoot. The film is also noteworthy for cameos by Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov reprising their characters from Eating Raoul. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into menswear …
5. Back to the Future
What would you do if terrorists turned up in a VW camper armed to the teeth? Poor Marty McFly doesn't know what he's letting himself in for when a midnight rendezvous in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall (shot at Puente Hills Mall, again in California) turns into a confrontation with said terrorists after Doc Brown nicks their plutonium for his time-travel machine. A wacky chase scene in the carpark features the killer line: "Let's see if you bastards can do ninety." Director Robert Zemeckis's use of quick-cutting heightens the comedic aspects and absurd sense of threat. Note how many times the JC Penney logo appears.
Last week, Emily Cleaver gave us a selection of ghosts featured in films. Here are Martyn's favourite suggestions from the thread.
1) HeresJohnny gives a worthy nod to the ghostly twins from The Shining.
2) MikeRichards's shout out for Julian Beck from Poltergeist II is bang on the money.
3) GreatPoochini declares The Lady in White (1988) as a great film ghost.
4) Mald2 quite rightly gives mention to the comedic rotting ghost played by Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf in London.
5) Finnyfish stakes a claim for Patrick Swayze's role as Sam in Ghost. Not all ghosts need to be scary.
Wayward Shopping Carts: A KMPH News Investigation - KMPH.com
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