Day 119, 5 May: Wroxham and the Camera of 7 Wonders

Norfolk Terrace, UEA, Norwich, Day 119. Wroxham and the Camera of 7 Wonders

Queen of the Broads

 Rebecca asked me via facebook last night if I wanted to take a daytrip with a group of seven to Wroxham. I said why not. This morning we all met at the main bus stop on campus and headed off to a place a 30-minute bus ride and 15-minute train ride away (the bus was just to the rail station in Norwich—and the two-way ticket cost more than the two-way train ticket, talk about irony).

Rebecca and Winnie In Sepia

Me, Marika, Anna, Emily, Morgana, Rebecca, Winnie, Sierra

      It was nice to see more of the Norfolk region, since I am studying abroad in this area, and our group was great: Marika, Sierra, Emily (there was also another Emily on the bus with us, but she was stopping in the city centre to study today; she’s good friends with many of them too), Winnie, Rebecca, Morgana, Anna, and me.

      Our first stop was eating at Wherrymans Restaurant, a nice wooden structure alongside the Norfolk Broads, which is a network of lakes and rivers in Norfolk and Suffolk counties. I hadn’t thought about it, but it could easily be said to be the Venice of England, to a certain degree and less glamorous than the truly incomparable majesty of Venice. For lunch, Marika and I had the Wherrymans burger (6 ounces of glorious beef) while others had pizza or an interesting ham salad with a slab of ham covering more than half the plate (Sierra’s dish).

      Next stop was the 2-hour boat excursion on the majestically named boat ‘Queen of the Broads’. A huge group of girls in their mid-twenties were also aboard, all wearing sailor hats and blue and white striped T-shirts. It turns out it was a bachelorette party and it was their day together. They took up much of the downstairs section of the boat, but we managed to find a good table to sit at. It was about half our group downstairs, mainly Marika, Anna, Winnie, Rebecca, and I, which reminds me, the day was ridiculously cold and windy. The others stayed upstairs and toughed it out, while getting quite likely better views of the broads.

In Toy Camera Effect

In Super Vivid

      But downstairs, the girls were impressed with my camera—I began showing them the effects like sepia and black-and-white and even a setting called ‘fish-eye effect’. Winnie inspected the camera and discovered that fish-eye wasn’t the only effect on that setting (and by setting I mean the ones marked on top of the camera in a dial, with the picture of a face for ‘Portrait’ setting, ‘AUTO’ for automatic setting, etc.). She explored the other wonders of my camera, finding monochrome (gray lighting), super vivid, and the group’s favourite ‘Toy Camera Effect’. I went on to discover the miniature effect (blurring the top and bottom of a picture) and the poster effect (really interesting colour contrast), which rounded off the seven wonders of my camera (Sepia, Fish-Eye Effect, Monochrome, Super Vivid, Toy Camera Effect, Poster Effect, and Miniature Effect). I had fun making that facebook album later that day.

Nap time...in Miniature Effect

In Monochrome

      The Broads themselves were beautiful—a lot of birds and nature surrounding us, as well as many privately owned boats passing us with their passengers smiling and waving at us. Our boat held at least fifty but more like eighty, I’d say. Unfortunately, I rarely ever heard the announcer commenting on the scenes we were seeing—I grew tired forty minutes in and took two naps—and a third one later. Apparently Winnie took photos of me sleeping with Marika and Rebecca hovering in the background. It was funny. Oh, I do remember one fact: there is a boat tax for being on the broads and for the Queen of the Broads, as a commercial vehicle, it has to be pay something in the hundreds. I was astounded by that. Then, since for some reason I remember the money trivia, there were houses on the broad that went for half a million pounds. The tour guide pointed them out on our left and I could see why they fetched that price.

      At one point, I visited the upstairs to see Morgana, Sierra, and Emily and the view of the sailboats was stellar. We had made it out to the middle of an enormous lake, and against the backdrop of a dark cloudy day, the sight seemed to lighten up at that point.

At the dock (Photo Courtesy of Marika)

My Favorite Picture

      After the two hours, we landed back where we started and walked back to the train station and headed home. Once back in Norwich, we walked a little ways to a store called Morrison’s. And it blew me away. The prices were so nice! And so much food! All of us wound up buying weekly or bimonthly groceries—I’m particularly proud of my purchase of a bag of 22 bags of crisps…for a little over a pound. Marika and Winnie also bought them. Then I explored the store...French Brie cheese! A pound! Apples! A pound! Bananas, oranges, a drinking cup! Pound, pound, pound! As Marika mentioned, it may not have been smart to buy food on empty stomachs, but hey, most of it was cheap! Meat wasn’t as cheap as the pound purchases, but still, this store was utterly amazing. I spent 26 pounds for basically two weeks’ worth of groceries. and on the bus ride back to campus, we all ate Marika’s popcorn. It was dinnertime already.

      Back on campus, the generous Alvin let me borrow his bike to ride over to Tesco’s to fetch a few grocery items I forgot earlier (or really, didn’t have room for). I enjoyed riding a bike, as this marked the third time I have done it since leaving California (the first time in Amsterdam, the second in Rome). I miss riding. I should’ve invested in one like Vinnie early in the semester. But ah well.

            I was in a social mood upon getting back to my flat, and so I decided to participate in the nightly celebrations in the kitchen and then head off to the LCR with my flatmates. I saw many of my Europe trip friends there too and the night was a blast.

Fun In the Kitchen (Photo Courtesy of Rachael)