Wandering Around in East Anglia

For anyone who follows me that lives in England, you're probably thinking to yourself, wow, what a boring bunch of photos.

I think that is a fair thing to say if you are a local. It seems that just about everywhere you go in England the layout is quite familiar. Being an American, however, everything can seem pretty novel when visiting England for the first time.

Of course, I have been to England loads of times. In fact, I have lived there for up to 6 months at a time. I just happened to come across these photos and it reminded me of how fascinated that I was the first time that I ever went there.

As you can see, I took a lot of pictures of random street views. I can still remember that sense of fascination about being in a new place.

One thing that strikes you is the sheer amount of brick. If you live on the east coast of America, this is very familiar.

In fact, I grew up on the east side of the United States so this was nothing new. However, my girlfriend who is from England, has spent most of her time here in the US living on the West coast.

Because of this, for a long time she thought that American houses were all made of stucco. cement and wood. I mean, this is pretty much what Los Angeles looks like.

The one thing that you get in England that you just don't get at all on my side of the world is the really old looking stuff sitting smack dab in the middle of the new stuff.

Well, to be fair, you might have a 200 year old house next to a modern building, but you would never see a medieval castle right next to a school. It really puts it into perspective just how short a time us Europeans have been on this continent.

The above image is the path leading up to Freshfields, the street my girlfriend grew up on in Newmarket, Suffolk. It is nicknamed Black Hill by the locals because there are no street lights which make it quite eerie to walk through at night.

Also, local kids like to get together there and plan out mischief. I caught them doing this on several occasions while walking home. I guess there are troublemakers everywhere!

The above two images are from a graveyard near where my in-laws live. This is another thing that you don't really see so much here in the US. The really old elaborate gravestones.

Well, don't get me wrong - there are a lot of elaborate gravestones. They just have quite a different feel than those you see in England and Europe.

The next time we go to visit family over in the UK, I think I'd like to go to Spain. We've been to France and Italy several times, but surprisingly not Spain. I say surprisingly because I am actually pretty fluent in Spanish, so it makes sense!