Let me introduce you to Zwolle, the lovely little capital city of Overijssel. (A province whose descriptive name means “above the Ijssel river,” if you’re curious. And Zwolle is named for the minor contour- which in the Netherlands would likely be called a hill – upon which the city was originally founded: Zwolle is related to the English verb “swell.”)
First of many photos I’ll be showing you from the lovely island of Texel, off the coast of the mainland and the northernmost part of “Noord Holland” aka North Holland.
Rotterdam, one learns, is Europe’s busiest port and was until fairly recently the busiest in the world. It also has a long history of shipping, and in its urban center features both an indoor maritime museum (which I’ve not yet entered), and a living outdoor museum that you can walk through for free (as I did during the evening walk which yielded these photos), or do tours with information shared if you book and pay…I assume. Haven’t yet researched that part. And as you’ll see, some of the lovely older buildings did manage to survive WWII. I’m told that the one you see here was temporarily moved so that they could build a new tunnel under it, then brought back to its plot once the tunnel was constructed. Good engineers, these Dutch folks, eh?
Ok so it’s actually the world’s oldest artificial rowing course in the word, but it is connected to the water various other canals that you’ve seen before. In fact, you’ve seen the Bosbaan (forest course) itself in another post under more dramatic lighting conditions. This was taken last weekend during this year’s edition of the grand old Holland Beker rowing competition Quite fun to watch all the teams race past, though this was taken during a quieter moment between heats.
Yep, I still live in the Netherland which has greatly abundant gardens & parks, both urban and rural 🙂 … which, in case you’re wondering, is why these trees aren’t yet fully in leaf: this photo was taken more than two months ago but I’ve only caught up with it now 🙂
As noted in the last post, Rotterdam has a lot of funky cool modern architecture, often alongside some lovely old buildings that survived the war. This is an area called Museum Park – the tall tower is the most famous museum, called apparently Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, closed for renovation for a few years now. The mirrored round building is the “Depot” where ordinarily the main museum houses works not currently on display. At the top left is Het Nieuwe Institute, showcasing design and architecture. The reflections of large groups of school children out for some special evening of school-kid activities, all moving in real life and reflected below the mirrored skyline in the depot building, made the experience honestly rather magical for me 🙂
Yes, there’s air-bubble writing in that there canal. If you can tell me what it says, you’ll win my thanks :-). Rotterdam, as every Dutch person seems to know, is a much more hip and modern city primarily because it had to rebuild itself after being very heavily destroyed during WWII, so it decided to go quite modern in its rebuilt architecture. Stay tuned for more :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 