North Holland & Amsterdam

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All from a delightful long walk over to and around Amstelpark, at a bend in the river where apparently Rembrandt liked to come for plein air painting, near this windmill in fact, according to the signs. 🙂

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One of my favorite light sculptures from this year’s edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival, which this year I did by boat. Last year we were in lockdown, so no boat tours were possible, now that I know where to find them all, I can go back see some of my favorites again from the banks of the canals instead of from a moving boat :-). The building behind it is the Amstel Hotel, apparently the first hotel in Europe to be electrified, if I understood what the boat tour guide told us.

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…like I said, then it got warmer and there has been precious little blue sky since…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 :-).

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From my office rooftop during a break from a meeting recently.

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