I created a tag called “graffiti art” years ago, I think when I visited Melbourne for the Australian Open in 2009. Recent days have given me opportunity to appreciate the differences between graffiti (art) styles in Amsterdam and SF – wait for some of my mural photos taken on my last morning in SF, and also for some I believe I got while I was up Eureka. 🙂
So yes, we landed early Tuesday in Amsterdam. While I was away, the crocuses faded, the leaves remained absent from the trees (though many are strongly in bud by now), and as you see in these photos taken while walking to stay awake, the tulips are coming into their season.
No, I’m not yet back in Amsterdam, but I did collect some lovely photos of the spring bloom before I left. Thanks to everyone who’s been happy to see regular posts resume, I’ve decided I’ll try to go daily again, so this is being posted as I wait to board a flight from Austin back to SFO. Next up, more of Northern California, no doubt mixed with more from this weekend’s family Texas swing along with more from A’dam, and possibly even Bangkok or Hong Kong where I stopped for work on my way over…
This was my parting view of my lovely neighborhood and home in spring, before boarding the bus for Schphol that I’m on as I type this. Yes, friends, I’m about to start a complicated and long trip that’ll involve a week of work in Bangkok and Hong Kong, followed by some family and home time in CA and TX, before returning to this lovely circle after the crocuses and daffodils which grace it each spring have faded.
With this winter-sunset view of the Amstel in the heart of my adopted home city of Amsterdam, I leave all you dear readers for some undetermined period of time and complete my 365 days of at-least-one-post-per-day. I expect to be back in a few months — and any comments, post-views, or requests for less or more of this or that type of post in the interim may help guide me when I start the next chapter.
A brief stop on the magere brug (thin bridge) over the Amstel, on an extremely rare clear morning bike ride to work last week. We’re looking north along the Amstel towards the building which houses the National Ballet & Opera, plus city hall for A’dam, with the moon setting off the the west.
While our Amsterdam weather since December hasn’t been nearly as dramatic & dangerous as California’s, it’s still featured more rainy days than one really needs. So far as I can recall, the sun has managed to peek through the clouds on four days or so since about the week before Christmas, and on only one of those did it stick around very long.
This means getting out to parks is quite simply hard and minimally appealing. Seeing anything visually appealing once there, let alone bothering to take the phone out and photograph it? Even harder. Nonetheless, there was sufficient break in the rain — even a fleeting moment of sun — to lure me into the park on my way home from the gym this morning. By the time my camera was out, the sun had vanished. In the seconds between when I took the photo above and the photo below, the sleet had begun. Ah, well, gardens are still gardens, even in the sleet and wind. 🙂
Conditions haven’t been conducive to after-dark walks for more Light Festival or other season evening lights. But I still had this lovely autumn shot of an illuminated clock tower nearby — the time was correct, and no the sky isn’t light at 7:15 these days, neither morning nor evening.
(so much world, so little time....) 