Luton carnival

been there for the first time ever today. I must say I was really impressed. it maybe not as big and famous as Notting Hill carnival, but on the plus side - neither is it so crowded. In Notting Hill I could see exactly nothing at all, and my understanding is that this is a rule, rather then exception. Here you really can see the parade from not far

Interestingly, I only noticed the heavy-duty straps (on the first pic on lady's shouder(, for example) that are needed to hold the costumes when I started to look through the pictures.

Weather wasn't great, but well, you can't have everything

those eyes

battling with enormous energy dip, went shopping. it helps, yes.

They had birds of prey charity display at scotsdales garden center, as they often do on weekends. This owl was sitting on a glove of the handler. When confronted with the eye of the camera, it got agitated and tried to fly away - unsuccessfully, of course.

I think he was bothered that somebody (or something) had even bigger eyes than himself

Pottery in Haria

We drove to Haria, which I think the guide described as "the prettiest village on Lanzarote", via road from Teguise. That experience (driving that is) I don't recommend to anybody - there are a few hairpin bends on the way down to the village, with very very limited visibility, and the road is narrow. Fortunately, there is another, much gentler road, coming from eastern side of the island, so you do have a choice.
The village is quite pretty and relatively green, but it's not as pretty as I somehow expected. What I really liked there was the pottery workshop, belonging to Aquilino A. Rodríguez Santana - would be cool to find him on facebook, but he's not there, apparently.




Those little pots are rather charming. We bought a couple of small ones (keeping in mind the luggage restrictions). I would like a bigger one, but maybe I will have a chance to buy when we move to the Canaries.




That's the owner of the workshop. The black inclusions in the clay he uses are particles of volcanic sand, as far as I understood (between his not very fluent english and my extremely limited spanish)





some of his sculptural work. I like the female figure the best.




While we were there, a young woman, his friend and colleague, walked in. She was not from Lanzarote, but from mainland Spain, on holidays, and she was also very curious to look around, pick things up and examine them

This ant helmet-mask she is wearing is made of papier-mache. It's quite scary. He tried to explain to us what it is for, and as far as I understood (see note of language barrier above) it goes as follows : he wears it when he stage protests against their beautiful island being taken over by hotels, which encroach on the land as ants.



Lanzarote pics on shutterstock

first real strawberries

on the way back home yesterday we bought a bunch of asparagus and these strawberries from a roadside trailer. they must still be from a greenhouse, but they are local (from Norfolk, that is) and nicely combined good taste with being extremely photogenic - large and shiny and nice even color - it rarely happens.

now their pics are already selling nicely on shutterstock - I am curious if I can get back the price I paid the first day of selling. So far not, but then us picture buyers didn't have their say yet

sand

went to Cromer today. seaside places in hot weather are real time holes - you park the car, go down to the beach, spread the blanket and next time you look at the watch an hour gone by.

I am still a bit worried about Timur's bump on the head (he slipped in the changing room of the swimming pool on Friday), but he seems to be doing fine. He discovered that hardened sand explodes into particles really nicely under little pressure

allium

this allium proved to be a brave little soldier, battling against the pretty much unstoppable advance of garden mint and, if not succeeding, at least not giving in. It was one bulb that was planted, and there are four flower-heads we had this year. The photo is composite image, I cut just one stem, leaving the rest of them in peace

sunset at world's end

Verdens Ende

I just read that it has panoramic views of the Skagerrak - a geographical name that I though was fictional up to last year, when we went to Denmark. Now it follows me around, or so it feels.

here

Hepatica nobilis

pretty plant with unattractive name.

I mean - "liverwort" - why on earth? apparently the leaves look similar to liver - weeeelll. I don't know. I won't say so, but then, our ancestors had pretty vivid imagination in any case - look at the constellation names. Ursa Minor? how do you figure that, huh? Dipper - yes, I'll grant you that. Little Bear - not really

wobbly spring Norway

wobble wabble.

there were ripples on this lake and there was no decent reflections to speak of when we got to the far end. there were some in the middle though

white ones

Norway this w/e

Fuerteventura - around Montana Roja

one of the main roads on Fuerteventura, FV-1 from Puerto del Rosario to Corralejo, passes through the most spectacular it of scenery. First you go through rather lifeless lava fields before coming up to Montana Roja, and then you come into a different bit altogether - white sand dunes of Corralejo. Beaches by the dunes are amazingly beautiful. Some of them are more or less taken over by kite-surfers, but it doesn't really matter because you won't want to swim when wind is strong enough for them, and when it's not, there is no kite in sight. Well, maybe one or two.

Montana Roja seems to be an epicenter of roaming goats. They mostly stay in the lava area, but those guys above came into the dunes for a bit

Two very short videos on driving there first, coming up to Montana Roja




second, past the mountain, through the dunes. Lanzarote is visible in the background

sentinel

originally, we booked Parque tropical apartment for a week. There was no problem at all with the apartment itself and ground/pool maintenance, and staff was perfectly friendly and very understanding when ash cloud closed the airspace and we couldn't fly back home when we were supposed to (so we stayed one more night there). But, if you are used to relatively quiet place, this could pose a bit of a problem - the apartments really *are* in the center of Puerto del Carmen, which means that if one of your windows is facing the street, there is going to be cars and people going past well into small hours. It's quite noisy. If you are from town somewhere, no problem, but for us, village dwellers, it is.

So, for the rest of our unexpected second week at Lanzarote, we went back where we were over Christmas - Hyde Park Lane. It is a bit out of the way (which means quiet nights and fine if your are renting a car). The only real drawback there is that the little bungalows are semi-detached (duplexes), and the sound insulation between two parts is practically non-existent. We didn't notice that over Christmas, because the second half was empty. This time somebody lived next door. Luckily for us, they were really really quiet not so young couple, so we had nice relaxing second week.

When we walked up to the reception to find out if we can just turn up or need to book ahead (turn up is fine), this beautiful cat appeared from somewhere and sat on the low stone wall surrounding the apartments. We admired it, and I am pretty sure kids were looking forward to getting to know him better. Sadly, he never shown up again

Teguise market

Every Sunday, there is a market in Teguise, in approximate center of Lanzarote. The is quite a variety of stuff for sale - from foods, via inevitable aloe vera products and lava jewelry to clothes and musical instruments. You won't necessarily want to buy something there, but it's a pretty village, and very lively on Sundays, well worth a visit just to look around.

The girl in the picture above was a very friendly jewelry-seller there. She was happy for her display to be photographed and posed herself. I asked if she had a facebook or email account to pass the pictures (if any f them were good). Unfortunately, she didn't have either. I am thinking - won't it be great if one of the people who see this picture know her of somebody who knows her? I know the chances are slim, but still - if there is anybody on Lanzarote you know, show them this pic. I will be very happy to send her a file in good resolution

Below are guys who entertained shoppers at some point, they were great too

hazy sea

inevitable long exposure shot. eight seconds exposure, aperture - also eight. at this time the artificial light starts to show close to the water edge, giving it reddish tink

Light evening on Lanzarote

I just love the way wet sand reflects, especially when the tide is out and there is a large expanse of the beach covered in just a small film of water.

I did some balancing betwen the top of the pic (tends to go light) and the bottom, but not too much

kids on Fuerteventura

since we had one whole week to spare, one of those extra days we went to Fuerteventura on a sea ferry. It was not cheap - with discount that car rental company* gave us, return for a car and four passengers was over hundred euro. Apparently, passengers cost quite a lot - return for a passenger only and no discount was 33 euro.

anyway, it was worth it. Fuerteventura may be not as cozy as Lanzarote, but the white sand beaches there are absolutely beautiful.


* - btw, unbelievably cheap car rental from cabrera medina, 20 euros per day for Opel Meriva, fully insured, no excess. That was a special offer, but it'll be still cheap without. I am sure that I would not find anything cheaper if I looked for car rental via web beforehand, but I am too lazy to go and check now. Hiring while there is easy, just have your license with you (I forgot mine last time!)

house number ten

we found this old house in El Golfo - village where you come to eat seafood. I am not sure if anybody ever lived in it, or it was abandoned at the construction stage, but it looked very picturesque, what will grungy walls and blue sky and bindweed flowers below it

Village itself is very small - one main street with a few cul-de-sacs off it. Its restaurants (apparently raison d'être) were nicely positioned and served good food, but charged more than elsewhere - specifically for the location, I guess.

The road to the village is in good condition, but quite curvy as it follows the coast. There is a picture of the road here, so you can see fr yourself.

Apart from the restaurants and black volcanic sand beaches there is one more sight to see there, but having seen it I am not sure it was worth it - Charco de los Clicos. What you see if you follow the link is exactly what it is - a shallow strangely colored pond on black volcanic sand. If you do want to see it, I would advise to go to the village itself, park in the first carpark on the left, and walk about 100-150 meters. You will get a good view of it from a high-up point. If you follow the sign on the road instead, you will come to it on the same level and will get a worse view. It appears you can't come right up to the pond itself anyway - there is some sort of barrier, just about visible in the picture.

Pimientos de Padron

Those small green peppers, fried and salted with coarse (sea)salt, make at excellent starter or snack. Actually, this picture is to (hopefully) catch your attention, I just wanted to mention a couple food-related observations.

First - the best value for money for good quality authentic food on Lanzarote we found in Bodega Rubicon, In La Geria wine-making region. I will post some photos of this very odd place later. I can't comment on the quality of their wine, their main produce, since I was the driver, but their small restaurant served us an excellent meal.

Second, long overdue mention - small restaurant Ureka (yes, not Eureka) in Santa Ponsa, Mallorca, where I tried those peppers first. It is a small place, and you find it at the end of the row of restaurants as you go from the beach toward the marina, somewhere here, maybe a little to the right, but on the same street. They serve excellent-value, simple but tasty food, like whole baked local fish and those peppers.

PS - and we bought a packet of those pepper seeds, so I will have a go growing them here

Lanzarote sunset again

we are back from Lanzarote, arrived today in small hours.

looks like we got off really easy with airspace closure, although not inexpensive - extra holiday week did cost something, of course. but we didn't stand in long airport queues (apart from one instance), and didn't spend any time sleeping on the floor anywhere, and didn't have to cross half Europe on coach, train or foot.

our short and not very interesting story was that on the day the airspace closed - 15 April - we were supposed to fly back to the uk. I switched on the tv to check if my watch was correctly set and saw the news. Only Kirill went to the airport then, and, luckily, by the time he got to the desk, all the weird flying options ("you fly to Madrid, then take a donkey to Barcelona and fly from there...") for the nearest days were exhausted, so he had to take tickets for exactly week later - a bunch of them just became available, as people who were due to fly to Lanzarote on that day for a week cancelled the whole thing.

So we stayed for another week and flew back on the second day it became possible - which may well be the best scenario

Unexpected bonus was that when I was taking car out of Luton airport,I was fully prepared to pay a fortune for an extra week. Incredibly, they apparently waived the charges - when ticket was inserted, the barrier was raised and off I went. But maybe there was some glitch and they'll be in touch with coupla thousand bill, who knows.

smoky orchid

so far my attempt to follow any of the tutorials on "how to make a smoke brush" in illustrator failed. so I've made up my own brush. maybe not very smoky, but it came out a lot better than some earlier ones.

I think I need to continue in that direction, but some of my earlier pictures, outlined in that brush, look kind of interesting. here is one