North Holland & Amsterdam

City Views.249

Last day of my third full year based here in Amsterdam, a city in which I’m now always happy to “come home.” It celebrates its 750th anniversary next year, with that light shining up into the sky originating from that first settlement. There’ll be anniversary celebration events all year, which you can check out if you’re planning or thinking about visiting the city. I’ll share a few shots of a recent sunrise over Sloterplas (where I live), to wrap up this year in ‘city views’ from home. 🙂

Urban Canals.188

On clear mornings, my bike ride to work can feel like a gift.

Bridges.6

Oops, somehow I skipped this lovely new series when I ran through the “6” set, so now I need to catch up. Since we’ve shown you bridges in Paris and Berlin so far in this series, I’m home to Amsterdam for this first catch-up post, a lovely pedestrian bridge (bikes also, but the paths to the left side there aren’t paved and do wind a fair bit through a surprisingly wild patch of parkland) the park across the street from me.


Urban Canals.187

Trying to avoid overloading you all in January, by giving you a range of Amsterdam canal images early, with the classic tourist style above, on my way home from work a while back. The middle, below, if you’re curious, is a launch dock for kayaks, canoes, and other small boats — and connects, once you go through that claustrophobic tunnel, to Sloterplas, the lake I’ve been showing you regularly since I moved next to it last year.

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Urban Canals.186


Urban Garden.216


Islands.76


City Lights.76

Amsterdam’s annual winter light festival along the canals opened last week, so I’ve begun seeing them on my evening and morning bike commutes. We’ve shared many festival sculptures with you in the past. (If you view full version, select the label “winter lights” which you ‘ll see below in this post itself, and many will be from this lights festival.) I’ll be interested if any of the light sculptures this year will surpass what my favorite from the three years I’ve so far been enjoying this festival :-).

Lake Living.56


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Urban Entrances.145


Coasting.115


Signs of the City.105


Lake Living.55


Urban Canals.185


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Urban Canals.184