Palm Springs

Gorgeous, but pretty weird, and I'm very glad we went in October, not July!

Cornwall

If you haven't been, go now. At once. Well, maybe wait for the summer.

Hollywood

Mr Spouse is quite good at taking arty photos.

Tanzania - Small airplane

After losing my passport I had to get it replaced in Nairobi, which meant we had to leave our safari early and fly back instead of driving. This is the plane. Reassuring, no?

Tanzania - Ngorongoro crater

One of the biggest concentrations of large mammals on the planet.

Tanzania - Coffee growing area

It is truly gorgeous here. I had my passport stolen also but it does serve me right for leaving it lying around in the hotel lounge.

Back in the saddle

We interrupt your photostream to bring you other news.

At home, I cycle to and from work - about 4 and a bit miles, and quite hilly - a couple of times a week. I'm organised with clothing and cycle in bike clothes, change in the office, put on makeup etc. I got a bike back in September, probably, but then I didn't have a bike rack or a basket and then after that I had pleurisy (which is NOT AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS though still quite painful). I feel fully restored now, touch wood.

So I finally got to ride the bike home from work yesterday. I didn't ride all the way to work as it's 6 miles up a very very steep hill, I rode about a mile and a half and then put the bike on the bus - a very good invention, in the UK you can if you are lucky put your bike inside small trains but not usually trams and definitely not buses - to go up the hill.

I wasn't entirely sure if I was going to ride home though as I had a lot to carry home and it is very very steep (did I say it's steep?) and it's pretty dark on the less busy road, and pretty busy on the less dark road. But I braved it and I was mighty glad I did. , Once I'd ridden home down the hill which is the first couple of miles of the ride home, the downtown part of our little suburb - we live the other side of downtown - was completely solid with traffic as a water main had burst. Oh how smug I felt, asking the nice man in the high-visi vest if I could push my bike round the corner, and walking past the traffic.

Then of course my light failed halfway home as I hadn't charged it enough. Grr. And my legs hurt. But very steep downhill with brakes on all the way, plus more up and down than I thought in downtown, meant a 6.5 mile journey still only took 50 minutes. Not too shabby.

Next up: Dr Spouse starts running again. Watch out, neighbourhood.

Tanzania - Lake Manyara

There is a very small giraffe in the distance, honest.

Tanzania - Coast Region

This is on the beach in the town where I lived for 2 years. You can basically see this view from my old house.

Zanzibar - Sunset from Beit-al-Ajab

Sorry - cannot resist another one. This is from the House of Wonders.

Zanzibar - Indian Ocean

Zanzibar - Stone Town

I could fill an entire year with daily pictures of Zanzibar. I think I've been there 10 times, the first time being in 1990 when it was really non-touristy. It changes every year, sometimes for good (it is a lot safer than it used to be and there are a lot more places to eat where you won't get a stomach bug, and places to stay where the loo isn't a hole in the ground), sometimes not.

Kenya

This is in a small town on the coast of Kenya, where I sometimes work - the monkeys hang around outside the office and play on the cars.

Mombasa

Same work trip as the previous picture.

Lake Victoria

From the Uganda side, I am very sorry it isn't from Kisumu (where Obama's father comes from). I have been to Mwanza, on the Tanzanian side, as well but it was a while ago, and to a couple of other places on the Ugandan side, but not to this part of Kenya. I was in Uganda visiting another student working here. It's very bizarre as it completely looks like the ocean, sandy beaches, blue water - but is fresh water.

Universal Studios

Cheesy, I know. I am sure I've been there at least 3 or 4 times.

Lombok, Indonesia

Visited about 18 months ago to supervise a student's fieldwork. I have prettier pictures but I love this one because it was just taken out of the window of the house I was staying in, but you probably can't see the kite very well.

Gol, also in Norway

Although this doesn't show the scenery - part of the same trip as the previous picture, but taken from the window of our rather cramped cabin where we had an ill-advised ski-ing holiday with my mad family.




(Have just noticed Blogger thinks it's tomorrow already - so that's why the times have been messed up.)

Nablopomo

So I've decided to jump on the bandwagon, but I need to do something really simple. I am on Facebook and I got into a kind of competition with my cousin into who had been to the most cities on the Cities I've Visited widget.

So I've decided I can easily post 29 (now) pictures of places I've been. Some may not be pictures I took myself but I'll try and post ones either Mr Spouse or a friend took. I'm not sure I'll write much in the way of comment on these, sorry!

Today: Oslo.

I'm sure you've all been on tenterhooks...

We ended up both being angels. I had already decided to knit a pair of angel wings for myself and was bowled over when Mr. Spouse said "OK, I'll have wings too". In the event he loved his wig but refused to wear the wings for more than about 5 minutes. Fortunately his only took a couple of days to knit:



while mine were a bit more complex:




You can almost see the full effect of my costume here, but sadly you can't quite see the bright green leggings I scored in a store in Palm Springs which said "everything $16". Except the leggings which were $8!