Last week’s solar eclipse peaked here in Amsterdam at just about 89% coverage of sun by moon, shortly before I took this photo with my phone. Note how many people you see out enjoying the unusual event. I spent most of it ensconced in my sunroom, with my eclipse glasses on, and have shared below some highly-unprofessional shots in which I either popped the glasses over the lens so you could get a bit of a sense; or tried out the manual settings on my phone. I emerged with one strong recommendation: if an eclipse is happening near you any time soon, DO get eclipse glases in advance, and DO put them on at the time the sun starts being obscured, and keep them on. It’s a rare thing and I’ve now added eclipse chasing to my list of probable retirement pastimes. Included below are other shots once the moon had cleared and the sun continued it usual beautiful arc below the horizon.
I’ve actually got a few consciously human-made artworks in nature, but since I was already posting from my Doorn visit, I saw this photo and remembered how art-like I found this naturally-occurring image :-).
Vondelpark’s rose garden has been lovely this year. The duck was from a stroll through earlier in the year, that I just never got around to posting :-).
Sam and I both agreed that this grand entrance to Casteel Middachten (Middachten Castle) looks rather royal indeed. As part of our Veluwe-Zoom and Central-Gelderland exploration, we spent a lovely few hours exploring its glorious gardens, without going inside the building itself.
This is your orientation photo. All shots in the gallery (in full view – otherwise series of top to bottom photos without design) below are from inside Arnhem’s Eusebius Church, especially within its spire which was destroyed in late 1944 and early 1945. Look closely about the midpoint of the thinner part of the spire above, and you will see a glass box extruding from the tower. There’s another on the opposite side, which you can’t see here – and all the photos below show those as seen from inside looking out.
Sam and I spent a few days last week exploring the Veluwe Zoom & surroundings, and I finally got him over to see this church and several other historically-significant and lovely parts of Arnhem, many of which I’ve shown you in past posts from 2022 visit. We both agree Arnhem’s a great city.
The darker photos are both from February 2nd this year – so slightly more than six months ago. The sunrise photo below is from just now – took it out my living room window to show not only the lovely morning-cloud sky lights, but how big all those new buildings have grown this year! My last Urban Canals showed you the Pontsteiger Hotel as seen along one of our canals; above, if you enlarge and look to the right of the big crane, you’ll see it as I used to see it out my windows here 😦
Above, the Pontsteiger building (which is a hotel, btw) as seen from one of our canals – now that I can no longer look out my window to see it, I figured I’d show it from other perspectives. Below, a few photos showing the ongoing work to stabilize and strengthen some of the older canals in the heart of the city.
(so much world, so little time....) 