At the Royal Palace in A’dam (which started life as city hall back in the 1600s or so), one walks through the impressively intimidating doorway in order to pass from the main hall into the throne room. Which, on the day of my recent visit, had nothing I could identify as a throne, thus this as the most impressive royal-symbolic image from that visit: we’ve got Atlas carrying the world, and justice being meted out just below…and it’s past those eyes you must enter the throne room. I think that upstart, wannabe bus we featured in our prior post would fit easily within this hall, plenty of room to spare. Ah, the symbolism of it all, eh? 🙂
That’s the coast of North Holland at the top, with the port of Ijmuiden (“mouth of the Ij,” which is the industrial-sized canal that runs from Amsterdam directly over to the North Sea) in the top-left quadrant and the lovely town of Castricum to the right. All as seen on Tuesday morning as our plane oriented itself towards the runway at Schiphol.
Two shots from an afternoon walk in early January at a moment when the sun had managed to break through the clouds briefly. I’m back in A’dam now with far longer days than when these shots were taken – so you’ll be seeing more A’dam and still lots from the recent US visit, in weeks / months ahead.
The lone gate of Haarlem’s old city walls that still stands is the Amsterdamse Poort (A’dam gate, originally named the Spaarnwouderpoort or Spaarnwouder Gate) and dating to the late 14th and early 15th centuries. One bikes right past this when one bikes over from my place to meet a friend for lunch in Haarlem, as I did on this particular day…
No, it’s not pretty – but it’s the last view I had of my Amsterdam home before the plane entered the heavy cloud layer. Below: the last photo I took before we landed about 10-1/2 hours later at SFO. Bit of a contrast, eh?
Briefly a royal palace from 1808 to about 1810, when Napoleon’s brother Louis was briefly King of the Netherlands before Napoleon took direct charge, this historic Haarlem building now apparently houses various provincial administrative offices for the Province of North Holland. For the curious, North Holland includes Amsterdam as well, and stretches from the island of Texel down almost to Leiden – which is at the northern end of Zuid Holland province. Yes, there is more to NL than A’dam :-).
Seen last Monday in Haarlem, when I biked over for lunch with a friend on the first day of this glorious ten-week vacation that I’m currently taking. As our last post showed, I’m now back in the Bay Area, having traveled Tuesday (my yesterday) much further away from home than a simple one-hour bike ride. Expect more California and US in the coming weeks, but don’t be surprised when NL, BE and CH photos crop up.
(so much world, so little time....) 