Oyster Festival

I’ve never been to an oyster festival before. And I’ve never had oysters from the BBQ before. Both were great.

Whitby Again

..and so to Whitby. Love the place. And the Fish Pie served at the Magpie Cafe. Actually I like the cafe as much for its technology and business approach as its food. They have large screens showing you what fish is available on the day. All the attentive and hard working waitresses enter your order into a PDA (and have done for quite a while now). The cafe is on Twitter, and they are continuously updating what they do. In these respects they are very like Fudge in Hull, working to improve and extend that their reach while still remaining very good at their core business, serving really good food.

We were blessed with some of the best weather I’ve seen for, well, months, and so I took some more pictures of the place.

We didn’t take a trip on the boat, but these folks seemed to enjoy it.

Last time we came the sea was so bad that we weren’t allowed this far out on the pier.

Elsham Hall

Took a trip out to Elsham Hall today. The weather was cold and grey, but didn’t actually rain, which was something of a relief. We were able to see the promise of the place though, definitely going back there in a few months when the gardens have got going properly. As it was, the main attractions were the livestock, of which there was plenty.

They have a peacock there.

.. and a turkey…

.. and some rabbits.

If you’ve got kids and are looking for somewhere to take them and tire them out, I can recommend the place. After all, that’s how we found it a few years back. And with Humber Bridge tolls down a bit now, going south of the river for a trip out is looking a lot more affordable.

Off to Greenwich

After a few days of early rises, what better way to spend a weekend than getting up at 5:45 to catch a train, a bus, a train, the tube and the Dockland Light Railway (DLR) to go to Greenwich.

Glad I went though. Lovely place. As well as the Cutty Sark they also have the Royal Observatory and of course the meridian. The weather was as kind to us as we could have hoped for, in other words it didn’t rain, and there was even a rather nice show in the planetarium.

Castle Howard

I don’t think that Castle Howard is really a castle. But it is a great place to go and see. It is a country residence on a grand scale, the kind of thing it takes several generations of “unbelievably richness” to come up with. We’ve visited it on and off over many years and once saw Bryan Ferry play live there. That was a good night, that was. It is also famous as the place where “Brideshead Revisited” was filmed. Twice.

Today we went for another visit, and I took the big camera along. We also did something we never normally did when we took the kids. We paid extra to have a look inside the house itself.

This kind of puts our hall to shame….

This is what they have instead of a garden shed.

They seem to have lots of flat screen TVs, but they are all stuck on one picture…

If you are looking for a nice day trip (around 75 minutes from Hull) I can strongly recommend it.

2012 Paralympics in London

We were lucky enough to snag some tickets to the last day of competition in the London 2012 Paralympics. Of course I took the cameras…..

Heading into the stadium.

The stadium is a very impressive piece of engineering

Especially from the inside.

Well, does he clear the bar or not?

Going for the win.

This is Oscar Pistorius (I wonder if he is any relation to our VC – Calie Pistorius?) winning in the very last stadium event of London 2012, by a pretty impressive margin.

Heading home.

Isle of Man Pictures

Not much to say today, but we did get some nice pictures

Exploring the Isle of Man

Got some holiday coming up? Fancy somewhere really nice? Go to the Isle of Man.

Never been there before, but I’ve been missing out. It has scenery that will give Yorkshire a good run for its money (which is saying something) and a fantastic coastline. It gives you the feel of being abroad (different money) without the hassle of being abroad (english money works fine too). We got to spend some time today exploring the island. The Isle of Man is a bit too near UK to be guaranteed good weather, but we found a good bit and headed for it. As you can see above, I’ve been playing with High Dynamic Range photography. This gives the pictures a bit more impact. Sometimes this means they look a bit more like they did when you took them. Other times it means that you can go for artistic effects like these.

I’m using Photomatix Pro to combine three images taken at different exposures. The program has a bunch of pre-set configurations which can be tweaked to get some very nice effects. And the good news is that the forecast is even better for tomorrow.

Bristol Balloon Festival

We went to the Bristol Balloon Festival today. It was probably advertised as “An Event for all the Family”, because all the families in Bristol seemed to have the same idea. My goodness it was busy. We had a bit of a queue to get into the car park, and then a bit of a trek to the balloon launching area. We’d heard on the way that, because of high winds, there was not going to actually be a balloon launch, but we’d already spent such a long time queuing at that point that we thought we’d stick with it and see what there was there.

The weather was great, we did get a glimpse of a balloon (see above) and it was a great evening.

Olympic Tennis at Wimbledon

We were lucky enough to snag some tickets for the tennis at the Olympics. This was held at Wimbledon, somewhere I’ve always fancied going to. So off we went. The trip across London was actually quite boring. After a media filled with dire warnings of travel chaos it was rather nice to just get on a sequence of trains and get there exactly on time.

The first match we saw was a ladies singles first round match and then we moved on to the highlight of the day for me, a second round match with Roger Federer.

Then, after a third match we headed for home.

There has been a lot of nattering about how London will have problems staging the Olympics and how the organisation and the infrastructure will not cope. This is rubbish. All the stops on the Tube were well highlighted and the trains were busy but very tolerable. They had folks lining the route from the station to the venue. The security check just took a few minutes and very person we saw, from the first chap at the traffic lights on the walk to Wimbledon to the cashier taking our money in the well organised souvenir shop, was polite and upbeat, asking if we had a good time and wishing us well. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. With a bit of luck we’ll make it to some Paralympics events in September too.

Flying home via the Skydeck

Today we flew home. But because the flight was not until the afternoon we had time to sample the Melbourne Europa Tower Skydeck , which has “the highest viewing platform in the Southern Hemisphere”.  This gave some very good views, as shown above.

It also had WiFi, so I could download some more Kindle books for the journey back..

Next we got to sit in an aluminium tube for 23 hours…..

Pinball and Batman

This is in one of the Melbourne shopping centres, you get this view if you eat at Nandos, which worked for me. After lunch I dragged number one wife all across town and down to an industrial estate for some pinball action. I’d seen an advert for a place called Bumper Action that said they had lots of machines for sale.

The advert didn’t lie. They had loads. all on free play.

..including the best machine ever, on the left. No idea who the bloke is.

They also sold spares, and I was able to buy a replacement set of electronics for the clock on my TZ machine. If you are ever in Melbourne you should check them out. They have loads of juke boxes and some arcade games too. Lovely place, run by folks who really care about the important business of shooting small metal balls around a wooden playfield….

Once we had made our way back to town we headed off to the Imax to see the latest Batman movie. All I can say is wow. I reckon it was really, really, good. Spiderman last week was OK, but this film shows how it should be done. I was a bit worried that, at well over two hours, the film might drag a bit in the middle. But it didn’t. A fitting end to perhaps the best superhero trilogy that we have seen.

Puffing Billy

Thought we’d get out of town for the day. So we went for a ride on Puffing Billy, which is apparently Australia’s favourite steam train. This is not Puffing Billy by the way, this is how we got to it. Essentially we took a train ride to take a train ride, which made perfect sense at the time.

This is Belgrave, where the train starts from. They seem to have some really cool cars there apparently.

This is Puffing Billy (or at least one of them)

Levers and pipes

Heading home.

It was great fun.I love the smell of a hot steam engine.

When we got back I had another go at capturing the view from our room.

Video Games and Napoleon Bonaparte

First stop today was the Game Masters Exhibition at the ACMI. Very good except for one thing, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures.  Then it was on to the Napoleon exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. I wasn’t planning on getting quite so much culture today, but they had a deal on the tickets.

I think these letters are actually larger than the great man himself..

You know you’ve made it when they reproduce you in bronze….

The exhibition was really good. The thing I learnt most from it was how little I know about French history. But it does look very interesting.

Trams with profound questions.

Once we had got our fill of culture we went for a wander around town.

Melbourne skyline

There were some really nice coffee shops on this street, I’d love to have been in town long enough to try all of them.

Shopping centre architecture

An umbrella display, slightly processed..

More Melbourne Culture. And watches.

Today we caught a tram to the Docklands part of Melbourne. They had a Roman Exhibition that looked interesting.

The whole thing was inside an enormous tent, which we loitered in for a while. Lots of Roman technology that you could play with, which was fun.

Then we went on to the harbour area, where you can take quite nice pictures.

After lunch we went over to Victoria Market, which has loads of stalls selling mostly tasteful merchandise.

Then we staggered back for the evening.

The view from our window gets even nicer at night.

Melbourne Museum Monday

This is the view from the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, a very imposing place that we didn’t get round to visiting.

When we go travelling we always like to take in the local museums and try to acquire a bit more culture (which might be a lost cause in my case). Today it was the turn of the Melbourne Museum.

This was ace. There was a superb exhibit on how the brain works. It turns out to be quite complicated. Next to the museum is the Melbourne Imax cinema. On the way out we bought tickets for the Batman movie that comes out on Friday. To superheroes in one week, both on Imax. Can’t be bad.

Melbourne Sunday

This is Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. It says so on the front.

Today we started our first full day in Melbourne. Lovely place. Has trams and everything. At the moment it looks like it is to Sydney what Boston is to New York.

But with more graffiti, which makes it a bit like Seattle too.

This is Federation Square. They have the Australian Centre for the Moving Image here, which has a fantastic exhibition all about the origins of modern mass entertainment. It even has an exhibit for Skippy.  There is also an interesting looking Game Masters exhibition. Perhaps we’ll take a look at that later.  No, we’ll definitely take a look at that later…

After lunch we went down to St. Kilda, which is down by the beach side. Every Sunday they have booths selling crafty bits and bobs, which were fun.

This is the entrance to Luna Park.

This is the main street in St. Kilda, given a very mild HDR treatment...

I just love what they did with this place.

The weather was very kind, but one thing I have noticed is just how fast it can change from bright blue skies to grey.

To this, complete with hardy swimmer.

Anyhoo, after a good walk round and another ride on the trams we were ready to turn in. Jetlag to Australia is the worst I’ve ever experienced. The day is completely inverted and there is no way to ease yourself into it gently. After well over a week we are still waking up at odd hours and feeling exhausted at 8:00 at night. But we are not letting it stop us have a great time. More fun tomorrow.

Hello Melbourne

This is the view from the hotel room. Not too shabby.

Today we headed out of Sydney towards Melbourne. People were telling us that “Melbourne is really cold and dismal in winter”. Australians don’t know what winter is. Winter is when water turns solid and you can see your breath. Winter is when it gets dark at four in the afternoon. Winter is properly cold. What Australians have is “Winter Lite”, where it gets dark a bit earlier and sometimes you have to wear a jumper. Or, was we call it in the UK, September.

Really looking forward to spending a bit of time exploring the city tomorrow.

Fishes, Animals, Robotic Personalities. And Spiderman

Today was our last full day in Sydney. So we did everything. In the morning we went round the Sydney Aquarium.

..where they had some sharks...

..some jelly fish..

..some fishy cupcakes..

...and Nemo.

Then we moved on to the small zoo. This is not on the scale of the big zoo we saw on Monday, but you can get a lot closer to the animals and insects.

Butterflies

All together now, Ahhh.....

..and this would be the wombat. In the afternoon we went to the Powerhouse Museum, which is a bit like the Science Museum in the UK, with some fantastic exhibits including a virtual personality on the end of a robot arm.

I asked it a most revealing question.

It particularly likes Camembert apparently..

They also had a Verbot, which I remember playing with many years ago.

We took a ride back on a genuine, bonafide, five car monorail.

This was the view as we were having tea. Very nice. After we had eaten we went to watch the new Spiderman movie. It was good fun, although you have to ask yourself why they made it. And then you remember that you’ve just given somebody a bunch of cash to see it.

Getting Arty in Sydney

We started the day with a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art which was fascinating. I don’t really understand all the art, but I know what I like, and there was enough of that for me, along with some thought provoking stuff.

From the cafe we got a great view of boats doing a square dance in the dock outside.

After a coffee we went and took a look at the Sydney Harbour bridge close up. Well impressive. Some of the students and judges had been able to do the walk along the top of the bridge over the weekend. You can just see one set of plucky souls doing just that on the left hand part of the bridge at the top. I was sort of keen to do it, except that I suffer a bit from vertigo. And they wouldn’t have allowed me to take a camera….

This is a view of the underneath of the bridge. Solid Stuff.