Fireworks at the Lord Mayor Celebrations

These photos are taken last Saturday, at the fireworks show at the Castle... The show only took 10 minutes, but it was spectacular!

People waiting for the fireworks to start...

And there they were...

Finally a photo of me taking pictures of the fireworks ;) And in the other one you can see the smoke after the fireworks had finished. This is a long exposure and turned out quite nice!

We also walked over the fun fair in Chapelfield Gardens. I took those photos of the swing...

That's all :) Scroll down for more photos of that day, taken at the parade.

This week was a bit of holiday for me. Paul's mum came to visit and we went to see Holkham Hall and Holkham Beach yesterday. Today we walked around the Norwich, and as the weather was (finally!) really nice, I got some very nice photos. I will post some of those next week.

Have a good weekend!
Hanneke

Lord Mayor Celebrations - Parade

Hello!

These are the photos I took at the parade last Saturday...

A little girl waiting for the parade to start, and the pipers opening the parade.

This is the Norwich Samba Band... they are quite good (musically), and the dancers look great! But my reason for not liking them is obvious in the second photo... it looks like most of them were forced to play, such grumpy faces! Come on, smile!! :)

A girl from a Steeldrum Band and the Norwich Club of Mini Owners...

Blue blue blue...

A cute girl in one of the gymnastics club that were in the parade.

And some crazy people... The old man on the right was playing in a samba band!

Some more samba music and dancers... at least they know how to smile :)

Also notice the woman in the band who carries a sleeping child on her back...

The weather was very nice and the light was so warm, I stayed around to take those photos of the castle!

Norwich Cathedral

Here are the photos I took at the second lesson of the travel photography course! We had a similar assignment: take photos of the cathedral as for a brochure or magazine. I had been to the cathedral before, but never took photos there. I am normally not very interested in churches, but by having this assignment, it made me look at it differently and I really enjoyed wandering around taking photos! I also tried to get some people in my shots...

This is in the cloisters, a "tunnel" around the courtyard with great perspective. There was a man reading in one of the "windows", a very nice sight.

There are gravestones everywhere around the cloisters, but there happened to be one with roses on it. You also get a good view of the tower from the cloisters!

Inside the main part of the church, I liked the man sitting alone between so many empty chairs. The baptism bowl (?) on the right was used in a chocolate factory that donated it to the church, how funny is that :) Maybe they should do baptisms in chocolate then!!

There was a small exhibition of children's art, all models of the church. Some were really great, like this one made out of computer board parts.

I liked those candles in the dark church. The window on the right was beautiful, it was the entrance to a silent room.

The cathedral as seen from the back, and a sculpture above the entrance of the cathedral.

There is also a herb garden, smelling really nice because of all the lavender. You see many people spending their lunch break on the grounds around the cathedral, like this man reading his paper.

These women were chatting about Norwich, the one of black "belongs" to the church (sorry I am not very at home with church language, I have no idea what her function was). The photo on the right is my favourite! I really like this old couple, they looked so cute together... beautiful to see!

That's all, more photos will follow soon! We went to see the Lord Mayor Celebrations last Saturday and took many photos of the parade. At night, they lit fireworks from the castle rooftop, which was an amazing site! I took my tripod and got some great shots, I will post them in the next few days!

Hope you all had a good weekend!
Hanneke

Norwich Arts Centre

Last Friday was our first Travel Photography Course at the Norwich Arts Centre. It was really nice! Our teacher is Gavin Mount. We had a chat, and then he gave us a sort of assignment: to take photos of the building (inside and outside) as if doing it for a brochure. He also wanted us to practice in having people in our photo and asking their permission before taking photos. A bit scary, but it was actually really nice and I had some nice talks with people there as well! I really like the Norwich Arts Centre, it's a great place. I've been to quite a few concerts there, the acoustic is really great and there is lots of folk music concerts. There is also a very nice bar. So it was fun to go around taking photos of this interesting place, and this is the result!

Tomorrow is our second lesson, I'm looking forward to it! We will go to the Norwich Cathedral to take photos there, should be fun!

This weekend there are the Lord Mayor celebrations in Norwich, which involves a big parade, street artists and fireworks at the castle. We are planning to put the photography course in practice and take lots of photos there. So stay tuned for more :)

That's all, scroll down for more new photos, I have been busy today!

Norwich Castle & Royal Arcade

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!

Teaching Science

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!

Paul's Birthday

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