Sun, fun and beautiful buildings on the shores of the Mediterranean

I’m really excited to share this album. They’re from a recent trip Rupert and I made to sunny and warm Barcelona. Unfortunately we only had three days there but we loved every minute of it. As well as checking out Barcelona’s famous architecture and soaking up the atmosphere (with the help of some tapas and lots of sangria and Estrella), we were also able to spend an afternoon in a sports bar watching the last race of the formula one season… if only Mark Webber had won!

We stayed in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona – this place has so much character and so many beautiful buildings. The highlight was the inside of the Catedral de Barcelona (unfortunately the outside was covered in scaffolding)







There were three other things that jumped out as we walked through Barcelona:

1. Colourful buildings

2. Happy couples – maybe it’s the Mediterranean air


3. Bikes and scooters – so technically this is two things. While the push bike rentals all across the city are a great idea, they’re for residents only. This means poor old tourists have to walk everywhere!


Please feel free to leave any comment's below or over on the full album

A big red bus, a pile of rocks and some fireworks!

I’ve finally been able to upload the photos we’ve taken at various places around England (the full album is located here on the Sun-and-Snow webpage). We’ve done some great day trips since we’ve been here and on the whole have been pretty lucky with good weather. Unfortunately the cold and rainy days are beginning to outnumber the sunny days – the Queenslander in me is getting a bit depressed at the thought of the winter ahead :(

Enough whinging about the weather and onto more exciting things – we were lucky to have a few days in London before we headed up to Milton Keynes (more on this town another day but it’s a lot like Canberra except with even more concrete!). With only two days in London we visited some of the city’s major icons and for two Aussies that don’t have the best sense of direction, we found it surprisingly easy to work out where we were going (sorry for the stereotypical processing of the photos below but I just couldn’t resist).

We made a couple of quick trips to Cambridge and Oxford and while both were great, Oxford on a Saturday was a bit too busy for our liking. I was also disappointed that with all the second hand book stores in Oxford, I couldn’t find an old Oxford Dictionary!






We also spent the night in Salisbury and visited a famous pile of rocks nearby. Unfortunately we were at Stonehenge in the middle of a pretty average day (midday is just about the worst time to try and make nice looking photos!). I love the fact that it’s such a famous land mark but no-one really knows why it was ever built.

I thought I would finish with a photo of some Guy Fawkes Day fireworks that were held at a local village to celebrate the foiling of the Gun Powder Plot to blow up the British Parliament. Rupert and I are actually living in the grounds of a house that was owned by one of the men involved in this plot. He was eventually captured and be-headed once the plot was uncovered but there are plenty of rumours around that the plotters met at the house before the infamous night and/or hid in the house afterwards.



As always, feel free to leave any comments on the photos and please put your email address in the box up the top on the left if you want to receive an email when I update this blog. I hope to have some photos of our amazing (and warm!) trip to Barcelona up soon!

A portrait and some old motorbikes

In my last post I promised that I’d upload some photos of the English towns we’ve visited so far during our time in the UK. While photos of London, Oxford and Cambridge are coming - okay so it’s probably a stretch to class London as a ‘town’ - I’ve been busy trying to get some of my last pieces of uni assessment over and done with. Definitely not the most exciting way to spend my time when I’m in a new country!

So instead I’ve decided put up a few other photos that I’ve taken. Now You may have noticed that most of my photos are of nice scenery (such as Scottish Lochs) or fancy buildings, well one of my aims is to branch out and take more photos of people. Rupert was nice enough to be the test dummy for my first attempt. In this photo he is actually laying down on the bed (twist your head right and you might see what I mean). We improvised on the lighting by using a MAGLITE torch with a t-shirt thrown over the end to diffuse the light (I’m still reading the manual for my flash to work out exactly how to use it!). In the end I’m just happy I got a photo that is worth keeping (even if he does look slightly evil).


These other photos were taken at the British National Motorcycle Museum in Bickenhill, England - you can check out the full gallery here. This place has a HEAP of old British motorbikes. Rupert had a great time looking at all the bikes and as much as I like old motorbikes, I was glad I had my camera with me to keep me occupied while he wandered through. The first photo below is the engine of a three wheeled car from 1934 (not sure what it was doing at the MOTORBIKE museum?), while the photo underneath is a badge from a 1961 Norton.





I’ll finish with two Triumph motorcycles, one is a prototype that never got sold commercially while the Bonneville underneath is still very popular today. For those of you that aren’t into motorbikes, I really hope you can still appreciate the uniqueness of some of these bikes, especially in today’s world of plastic and fibre glass – otherwise, at least they make a change from my usual landscape photos!

Thanks again for looking and please feel free to leave any comments below or on any of the photos on the Sun-and-Snow webpage.

Some photos from Scotland

So we finally moved into a house on the weekend. What’s so special about this? Well, I was finally able to set up my computer and upload all of the photos that I’ve taken since we’ve been in the UK. Now I don’t have to be paranoid about accidentally hitting the delete button on my camera!

By far the highlight of our trip so far was our few days in Scotland. While we have also spent some time in London and have explored a few English towns, Scotland was just perfect and I couldn’t wait to put these photos up.

We went up to Edinburgh expecting it to be cold and wet. I even used it as an excuse to buy a new jacket! As you can see from the two photos below, we couldn’t have asked for better weather.



After having a great time in Edinburgh we drove up to the Scottish highlands. We stopped for a drink or two along the way :) and got to witness an absolutely amazing sunset over the Scottish lochs.



The rest of the photos from Scotland (including a few more of this cute little boat and some highland cattle) are posted here on the Sun and Snow webpage.

I hope to be able to post photos of London and Oxford in the next week, if you want to get an email when I add new photos, just put your email address in the little box on the right.

Thanks for looking and hope you enjoy the photos!

Welcome to the Sun-And-Snow Blog

As some of you know, I really enjoy taking photos. I like the challenge of trying to capture what's in front of me and making it look good on a computer screen or in print. Given Rupert and I are about to head off on a pretty big adventure with (hopefully) lots of great photo opportunities, I thought I'd use it as an excuse to set up the Sun-And-Snow webpage and this blog to share my photos and tell a bit more of the stories behind them. If you're intrigued by the website name, hopefully this page should explain why I chose it.

Rather than just leave my older photos sitting on my computer where no one can see them, I have also loaded some of my favourite shots onto the the website. The photo to the left is one photo I really like and shows what happens when I'm bored and home alone at night. Rupert came home to find that I had destroyed six wine glasses in the process of taking this picture!

The shot below is from our trip to Vietnam in 2007 and shows the great colours of the country's hill tribes. This was taken with my old little point and shoot camera and proves that you don't need a fancy camera to take a good photo.

As we're heading into the European winter, I thought it would be appropriate to finish off with a photo of a glorious Queensland beach. I got up at 3.45 am (!) to make it down to the Gold Coast seaway in time for this sunrise. I'm just glad it turned out okay!

That's probably all for now, whenever I add new photos to the Sun-And-Snow webpage I'll update this blog. If you enter your email in the box on the top right of this page, you should hopefully receive an email when the blog is updated. I hope you enjoy the website and please just let me know if anything doesn't seem to be working properly.