Rotterdam (or Anywhere) – Page 137 – Adventures in the Netherlands & around the world

Edinburgh

14/09/2007 Hanneke

Hello!

Here are the rest of the photos of my week in Edinburgh!

On Tuesday morning I skipped some talks and went into Edinburgh with Stephen. Edinburgh is such an impressive city!

There was an exhibition about Andy Warhol, and they changed the pillars of the buildings in his soup cans, fun! In the other photo you can see the castle high on the hill.

This is the castle as seen from the park, and the park as seen from the castle 🙂 I love how you can see the river/ocean from all high points in the city.

We walked up Calton Hill, with many monuments on the top. The view over the city is great! This is the Dugald Stewart Monument.

This funny building is unfinished, it was meant to become a model of the parthenon in Athens, but money ran out while building it (in 1822!) and even now nobody wants to spend money on finishing it! Next to it a panorama of Arthurs Seat (the name of the mountain) taken from Calton Hill.

These two photos are taken on the Heriot Watt Campus:

On Wednesday evening there was a Scottish Evening at the conference: whiskey tasting and a ceilidh! A ceilidh is a dance evening, where they teach you the group dances, good fun!

Patama and me as serious whiskey tasters, and a girl dancing over swords!

And a photo of the dancing, it was a fun evening! I danced with one of the dancers from the group, a “real” Scottish guy in kilt and all… I thought that was really cool, but the reason I say “real” is because I later found out he was actually Dutch!! Cheating!!

On the last evening there was a formal conference dinner, in Dynamic Earth. Great place to have a dinner! It was right next to the Scottish Parliament (cool building!) and Arthurs Seat is just behind it. Just before dinner it was colored red by the sunset and it looked more like Ayrs Rock 😉

I took the train back to Norwich the next morning, it takes nearly 6 hours. But it’s very beautiful, especially the first part when it follows the coast. Look at this place, I would love to live there!

Unfortunately I took a bad cold back from Edinburgh and I spent some days on the couch feeling sorry for myself 😉 Celia was here for a few days though, so that was fun!

And now it’s time for weekend 🙂

Hanneke

Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn!

04/09/2007 Hanneke

Hello!

I’m at the Heriot Watt University just outside Edinburgh, at the Royal Meteorological Society Conference. There was the student conference during the weekend, and the main conference started today.

It’s very busy but good fun! I’ve given a talk yesterday and am presenting a poster tomorrow. Lots of nice people here, I even met a Dutch guy today so I got to practice my Dutch, it’s been a long time!!

Anyway, I should really go to bed but I wanted to share some photos I took around campus here. The campus is really nice, out in the fields with lots of green. Autumn is clearly arriving, it’s sunny but cool and all the signs are there, even though I’ve also found the last of the Summer colors.

This morning I skipped a session (I don’t care much about chemistry, hehe) and went for a walk and took some photos….

That’s all 🙂 I won’t write more cause it really is bedtime now!!

Hanneke

Thetford Forest in the rain

20/08/2007 Hanneke

Hello!

I’m just going to ignore the piles of photos still waiting to be sorted and edited, and post some photos of yesterday!

It’s been raining a lot here, but we were fed up of being inside the flat the whole weekend, and we decided to go out anyway. We drove to Thetford Forest and visited Grimes Graves. These are 5000 year old flint mines! It’s very impressive, especially if you realize what it would have been like to be mining 5000 year ago… They used antlers to get the flint out! They needed flint for making tools like axes etc. To get to the flint, they dug a hole in the chalk upper layer and then made small tunnels from which they mined the flint. There are more than 400 of those mines in a small area! They are filled up now but you can still see the edges and dips. It makes a very impressive landscape. They opened up one of them for visitors.

These photos are taken inside the mine. In the first one you can see one of the tunnels, now supported with wood. In the second photo you can see the middle of the mine from where the tunnels start. It might look like those are big tunnels, but if you look at the third photo you can see how low they are! It made me a big claustrophobic to think what it would have been like to work in there all day…

Here’s a photo of what the landscape looks like outside. Paul is standing in one of the filled up mines, and around him you can see many more of dips – mines. It’s incredible to see!

We walked around for a while, and I had fun with my compact camera taking macro photos. There were lots of wildflowers, insects and other critters around. Unfortunately it was raining and a bit dark so it was hard to get sharp photos, but some worked out well anyway 🙂

The rain also has its good sides, I found those berries with raindrops on them! I love the reflections in the drops, and in the second photo I was trying to get this Escher effect 🙂

The site was closing at 6, so we drove further into the forest and went for a walk near the Little Ouse river (they same one I visited with Patama last year, see this post – bit sunnier then!) We saw a big group of scouts canoeing/kayaking down the river. The picture on the right is the village shop/post office in the tiny village of Santon Downham. Also to show you what flint is used for nowadays: houses!

It was nice to walk through the forest in the rain, and get some fresh air!

More raindrops! I wish I had brought a small tripod, these photos could be a lot better if they were really sharp.

That’s all! It was great to spend some hours outside, even if it was in the rain. Actually I quite liked the forest in the rain, and all the photo opportunities it brought 🙂