Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

I *finally* made it up to the Norwich Castle… after being here for nearly two years! I didn’t go in, just walked around, enjoyed the view (it’s high on a hill) and took some photos.

Built into the hill of the castle, there is Castle Mall, a shopping centre. This seems typical of Norwich, you build a shopping centre in a castle, you hold beer festivals in a church and there is another shopping centre where you walk over a grave yard before entering! The photo on the left is Castle Mall and on the right Paul’s favourite shop where he always needs to get an ice cream if we’re in town.

This is the Royal Arcade, a very pretty shopping arcade with some nice shops. Paul took the stitched panorama photo on the right.

That’s all, stay tuned for some photos taken at the travel photography course!

As promised, some photos of my last science lesson at South Harford Middle School! I did a lesson on weather, well it was on thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes. At the end of the lesson, we made a tornado in a bottle, which was lots of fun!

I really enjoy going to this school. The kids are always so enthusiastic and full of questions 🙂 This was my last visit this school year, but I’ll go again after the Summer break. Good fun!

Hello!

It’s more then 3 weeks ago now, but here are some photos of Paul’s birthday 🙂

Making a sachertorte (chocolate cake) the night before, I almost took a bite!

I had to wait until the next day though 😉 Here is Paul with his cake! He wasn’t happy with the candles I bought, but I think he was lucky cause I almost had to buy 27 as they ran out of 6’s in one shop hehehehe….

After eating cake, we went for a walk at a lake near Norwich. There are lots of swans and geese there, and some very cute baby swans! The lake is part of the Whitlingham Country Park, and there is also a very nice looking sports park where you can try all kinds of water sports, they rent out the equipment and also run courses. I like the building! It feels a bit like a tent.

We then went to the airport, I had booked a flight lesson for Paul! It was a big surprise and judging by the width of his smile, I think he enjoyed it a lot 🙂 He was so lucky with the weather on his birthday, it was the first nice day in a long time. The lesson was at Norwich airport and took about 1,5 hour including an hour of flying. I spent the time in the cafe that overlooks the airstrip and I took photos of 2 other planes before I found the right one 😉

Afterwards we went for dinner at our favourite place in Norwich: The Belgian Monk! They serve great Belgian beers (especially the kriek is amazing!) and – best of all – the serve Belgian food! The menu is half in Dutch, half in English, and they serve some of my favourite food that I really miss, like kroketten! We always order the same: kroketten and friet with mayonnaise 🙂 It’s so nice!! We also had dessert this time, and were very impressed by it. Paul had this enormous fruit kebab served with fruit beer sorbets, and I had a pancake with warm cherries and cream, SO good :))) It’s always served really nice as well, like the fries come in a kind of metal stand that looks really cool, see the first photo.

We rented a dvd from the library to watch at home. It was called The Rocket Post. It’s based on a true story about a German rocket scientist called Gerhard Zucher who comes to live on an outer Hebrides island to develop a mail service to surrounding islands by rocket. Very impressive story and great scenery, I’d like to visit those islands one day!

Anyway, so that was Paul’s birthday… a really nice day!

Other than that, not much going on here. Summer is still hiding somewhere, it’s mostly raining (or pooring) or if we are lucky just very cloudy. Sigh… I am waiting for Summer! Especially since I have no travel plans this Summer! Well of course that’s not completely true… we are thinking about doing the coast to coast by bike sometime soon. This is a 225 km long trail from one side of England to the other side. Should be nice!

And I am going to do another course in photography! Tomorrow will be our first course, it’s a 4 week course on Travel Photography at the Norwich Art Centre. There are only 3 persons booked on the course (Paul, me and someone else) so that sounds good… I’m looking forward to it!

I’ve also been to my middle school again, for the last time this school year… I made a tornado-in-a-bottle with them, it was lots of fun! I’ll post some photos of that soon.

That’s all for now!

Hanneke