If you’re wondering, yes I’ve shown you this canal several times before, but never when it was frozen so birds can walk on it. 🙂 This was the day returned from my vacation trip in Madeira & Porto. Eek! As upcoming posts will show, it’s since gone gray, rainy, and well above freezing but still fairly cold.
Last year,I managed a whole winter with no snow, and only minimal ice on the edge of the smallest ponds and canals. When I returned to A’dam from Portugal (two weeks ago, yesterday), it snowed the same evening and ice continued to deepen and solidify on the canals for several more days, ’til the temperatures went (and stayed) well above freezing on the 19th.
This year’s installation for the Amsterdam Light Festival in a little park near my office. You can see last year’s here. The whole festival is installed in and around canals on my office’s side of town, so I’ve seen some of them biking to and from work already, but do plan a boat tour some evening soon (not locked down this year, so I can do it a bit more warmly than last year!), and hopefully share some photos with you in future posts.
At least, if the sun had to be setting at 16:20, it was kind enough to be a clear (and cold!) day as the plane lined up for its landing at Schiphol last Wednesday :-).
I actually live down on the corner at the end of this block, and have confirmed my suspicion that at least one tour guide book to Amsterdam lists this street as a lovely little “hidden corner” because of the tunnel effect created by the trees and how the sunlight filters through the leaves, and sometimes – depending on weather and time of year – shines directly along the street. It’s really quite remarkably lovely at the right moment, though no photo can do justice to those moments. Took the photo on my way back from one of those pop-to-the-supermarket moments since the light was shining nicely and decided have to post it now, before the very last of those leaves you see has fallen…
Hortus (A’dam’s botanical garden) as seen from my walk from the metro station to work the day I flew to Dhaka – the rare occasion I didn’t bike due to the luggage at had with me, hence my ability to stop and take these photos of the lovely view :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 