This’ll be my last daily post for a while, ending with a reminder to seek and value small wonders in our lives. The cherry blossom pics below were taken on December 30! I first saw some of these trees in bloom on a gray late-November walk in 2021, and was delighted to see some trees in this same set again blooming again more than two years later at the tail-end of the wettest-in-history NL autumn of 2023. (The 2021 blooms were more pink-tinged, so might have been different specific trees but all in the same place.) What a blessing, given how monotonously, monstrously, constantly gray the autumn and winter months can here. Thanks to whatever urban and parks planners associated with the city of A’dam chose these trees to plant here. 🙂 The mushrooms above would have been photographed on my exploratory walks around my new neighborhood, after I moved to this new place in early August. Enjoy this break from daily posts and alerts, as I intend to. Who knows when I’ll be back to dailies.
Above: Stadsloket is one of the city’s administrative services offices, which are scattered around A’dam’s many neighborhoods. Below, two last photos taken along the marathon’s route in October, just west of the Rijksmuseum which you can see in the pics.
One of the big summer storms knocked down a few trees around town including this one in a park next to our office. Gallery below…every remaining A’dam 2023 photo with significant greenery in it 🙂
Sticking with my theme of using up more of 2023’s photos before taking my break, herewith all the remaining from-the-air shots of 2023. They’re in chronological order, so you first see my plane passing over the Dutch coast on 6 November en route to Dublin, then more of the English coast both on the east side (North Sea) and the west side (Irish Sea – so far as I could tell, we passed roughly over Liverpool, but clouds…), and then two 29 November images of the island of Penang and the sea north of it as we approached landing after my flight from Qatar to Penang (with a stop in Phuket); and, finally, 6 December photos as our plane traveled up the coasts of Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar en route from KL to Yangon. Not really sure which islands we’re seeing in these various shots, but fairly sure most were islands in Myanmar by this point.
Above, the moon sets over Sloterplas as seen from my balcony window on the morning of 26 December. (Before hopping the train down to Den Bosch aka ‘s Hertogenbosch for that lovely day we showed you in our last post.) Below, a gallery of pretty much every other remaining “city lights” relevant photo I took in NL during 2023 but haven’t yet posted. A note about the dawn photo of storefronts: the rose-shaped light decorations, which you will notice extend all the way down the street, tell you that this street is “Rozengracht,” which means either the street alongside the Rose Canal, or Rose Canal. In this particular case, I’m unaware of there actually being a canal named Rozengracht any more, but I’m guessing there might once have been one and the street is all that remains after the city did what the Dutch have always done, redirect the water. It’s entirely possible a more-knowledgeable Dutch friend will either email me or post a public comment to educate us all :-).
The heavily-flooded Maas (Meuse), which here functions as the border between the Dutch provinces of Gelderland (to left, north in this photo) and Noord Brabant. Took this, plus the shots of two different castles in two different villages below, during a 26 December walk with my friend Kiki while visiting her for a lovely Christmas-holiday afternoon.
Three important things happened today in my world: 1) The sun actually shone for most of the afternoon; 2) Clouds were sufficiently absent long enough for the sun to be still shining as it sank beneath the horizon (below, at 4:41:08 according to my camera — above was at 4:25:39); and, most important in my little world, the earth has rotated enough now that it actually shines in the windows on my balcony for a few short minutes at the end of its time above our horizon here. (For a comparison sunset further north and west plus several hours later, check this past post from early August: my windows face mostly north, a decent amount of west, with only one little sliver of southwest.) Note that it might have shone in a bit for a couple days now, but with clouds omnipresent nearly full-time since early October (I do not exaggerate), wouldn’t know. So this is just me sending a bonus post to let the sun feel appreciated and welcomed.
2023 saw my first — and second! — visit to Geneva, with the second visit giving me the chance to watch the sun rise over mountains and lakes in France and Switzerland (above), with distant views including Mt Blanc back in France on the “far side” of Switzerland, as it were, from the side on which our plane had entered. The return flight from that first visit was an evening flight that let me watch the sun set over France and then watch cities over France, Belgium and NL light up (below) before we came in for our landing at Schiphol here in A’dam. One gallery for each flight, below.
Cheating slightly here, since one shot was really taken in a village and the other in a city, but I think one must not continue the whole holiday-lights thing too far into the new year…
2023 saw my first — and second! — visit to Geneva, with the second visit giving me the chance to watch the sun rise over mountains and lakes in France and Switzerland (above), with distant views including Mt Blanc back in France on the “far side” of Switzerland, as it were, from the side on which our plane had entered. The return flight from that first visit was an evening flight that let me watch the sun set over France and then watch cities over France, Belgium and NL light up (below) before we came in for our landing at Schiphol here in A’dam. One gallery for each flight, below.
(so much world, so little time....) 