Hello!

Last weekend I went to London with Tanja, but without my camera… Everyone who knows me, knows how unlikely this is. I always have my camera (the compact one, not my SLR) with me. Always. Even to work. And that’s where it went wrong last week. I was running to meet Gerardo at the gym in the morning, and in the last moment I thought of bringing my water bottle, so I threw it in my backpack. While walking to the sports park, I felt a drop on my legs. Hmm strange, it’s not raining. Another drop. Weird. Another one. Something is wrong… Then I discovered that my backpack was leaking water. Help!! I quickly checked the damage. Half a liter of water had spilled, my passport was soaked (yes I always carry my passport around as well, don’t ask why), my trainers were wet, my agenda was dripping and even my camera was wet. I had to go to the gym so I couldn’t do much. When I came back in the office I let my passport dry (it’s fine now), but it wasn’t until late afternoon that I remembered my camera. Hmm the battery/memory card compartment was wet. I dried it, and tried to turn the camera on. Ok that was probably the biggest mistake. It didn’t work. Everyone told me not to panic, just wait a day or two, it will work. It didn’t. It’s dead… I have no idea if there is any hope for repair. The battery and memory card are still working, the camera just doesn’t want to turn on. I’ve only had it since December but I got so attached to it. I miss it so much!! I want to buy the same one, but it costs 200 pounds here in the UK. Bummer!!!!

Ok so I went to London without my camera, I didn’t want to carry my SLR around for the whole weekend. We stayed in a HI hostel called Thameside, a bit out of the city centre but in a nice area. On Saturday we went to the Museum of Natural History (it’s free!), which is really nice. The Science Museum (free as well, I like the UK!!) is just next door and we were expecting a lot from it. Too much I suppose, we were disappointed. It’s more a museum about the history of science with lots of old instruments, while we were expecting a highly interactive modern museum (like NEMO in Amsterdam or Cite de l’Espace in Toulouse or the Science Museum of Minneapolis). So we didn’t stay there long.

At night we went to see Guys and Dolls. It was great!! Patrick Swayze only started playing in it 2 days before, and it was cool to see him. He’s 53, but looks the same as in Dirty Dancing (at least from a distance hehe). The audience was a bit annoying, after the show they didn’t even take time to give a standing ovation, everybody just runned away, we were really surprised by that. I though it was a great show, with some really good singers and dancers. We walked around West End for a while, and ended up in a pub in front of the theatre. We heard some noises, and I joked to Tanja: that’s Patrick going home. We looked out of the window (we were on the 1st floor) and he was there indeed, talking to people.

On Sunday we went down to the Tate Modern. I have discovered something new about myself, I REALLY enjoy modern art!! It was amazing, I loved it so much. Tanja-the-art-lover was even getting impatient because I was going too slow. hehe. We left at noon to go to a concert of Kat Flint in Victoria Park. I have seen her in Norwich, and really like her music. It was a very small concert, a picknick concert for charity. We sat in front next to her boyfriend, I really liked the atmosphere. We only saw three songs because it took much longer than we expected to reach the park. We stayed for a bit, then we went back to Tate Modern until closing time 🙂 After that, we took the train back to Norwich. It was a great weekend!! I definitely want to go back to London, I still have so much to see.

Ok that’s all for now… Ohh I did take some pictures of the thunderstorm last week, I’ll try to post them soon! Sorry for this boring post without any photos… until I make up my mind about buying a new camera, there won’t be many pictures I’m afraid 🙁

Take care!

Hanneke