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 :-).
Still working through photos of the flat and canal-rich countryside of Noord-Holland, Gelderland and Noord-Brabant in NL, even as I enjoy the steep hills and Atlantic views in Madeira. So much world, indeed…
Still from that lovely small-aircraft flight in late October, a few aerial views of the city of Utrecht. We’ve shown you street-level views many times, though clicking that link will also show you some of the rural areas outside the city proper. My first visit to the city came on my very second day after landing last year, when I registered with the immigration folks as a new legal resident in NL 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 