Rabbit's travels

A strange, beautiful and mesmerising place, laid out with great care to showcase the many different varieties of cactus, from towering monsters to modest little species the size of a tennis ball. Some are ferociously spiky, others furry, others like octopus tentacles. Rabbit was entranced.

Rabbit liked this picturesquely delapidated fence in Haria, including the wild flower take-over of the garden. HFF!

Rabbit enjoys a stroll around Teguise, the former capital of Lanzarote. There's a big tourist market here every Sunday - complete with 'English breakfast' and 'German bierkeller' pop-up cafes - but Rabbit prefers it the rest of the week, when you can walk round in peace and admire the handsome old buildings, painted white by law like all Lanzarote buildings, and the views of the surrounding countryside (surprisingly green).

We've no idea what this cactus is called, but we liked it very much.

A sort of fence runs up the steps of this beautifully restored windmill in Guatiza, Lanzarote. The mill was used to crush maize, among other things, to create 'gofio' (gofio mousse is a traditional and delicious Lanzarote dessert). It's amazing to think of the ingenuity and knowledge which led to the design of windmills - such large and complex structures 'just' to crush grains, but saving back-breaking work in the process. www.lanzaroteinformation.com/content/los-molinos-de-lanzarote I can't work out if Rabbit is holding his paw up in amazement, or having a private little giggle to himself.... HFF to all our ipernity friends!

Rabbit had an enjoyable weekend in the east end of London. He ate far too much curry, and enjoyed walking up and down the historic Brick Lane admiring the street life and art. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_Lane

Fournier Street is an attractive street of early 18th-century townhouses in Spitalfields running between Commercial Street and Brick Lane. It’s named after a man of Huguenot extraction, George Fournier, and many of the houses were originally occupied by wealthy French Huguenots who brought silk-weaving skills from Nantes, Lyons and other cities to London. The houses are notable for fine wooden panelling and elaborate joinery. Silk-weaving was carried out in the uppermost floors to gain the best light for the looms – you can see some of the glazed lofts on the left hand side of the collage. The ground floor rooms commonly served as elaborate showrooms for the finished products. After the decline of London's silk weaving industry at the end of the Georgian period, both Fournier Street and Brick Lane became established as the heart of the Jewish East End, with a large number of Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia moving here in the 19th century to establish a thriving community. The Jewish Chronicle newspaper (the oldest Jewish English language weekly in the world) was founded here. Later the area became popular with the Bengali community, and nowadays it’s also home to artists and craft markets. The artists Gilbert and George lived in Fournier Street at one point. The famous Petticoat Lane fabric and clothing market is near here, nowadays selling, among other things, sari fabric and fabulous waxed fabrics from west Africa. At the end of Fournier Street a Huguenot Chapel was built in the 1740s. It later became a Protestant church, then a synagogue at the end of the 19th century, and is now the London Jamme Masjid (Great Mosque) – both the building, and the street itself, are symbolic of the east end as a place of refuge and community for different people over the centuries.

Naturally Rabbit wanted to visit BUNhill in London..... Bunhill Fields is a former burial ground, used from the 1660s to the 1850s, in the city of London. It was non-denominational, and particularly favoured by dissenters and nonconformists (protestant Christians who practised their faith outside the Church of England). It includes the graves of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake (one of Rabbit's heroes) and Blake's wife Catherine. It's now a community garden, and a peaceful spot in the hurlyburly of the City Road. HFF and have a nice weekend to all! We're posting this early as Rabbit is going away for Easter, to look for fellow Easter bunnies in Northumberland....