This trip is built upon my years-long desire to finally visit both the Hoge Veluwe National Park (largest in NL, meaning probably comparable in size to Manhattan), and the Kröller-Müller museum which sits inside it. The museum is most famous for its large collection of Van Gogh painting as well as other beloved 20th century painters. I’d known it has a sculpture garden, but not quite how park-like and wonderful the garden is. It’s spawned a new series for me, because I spent today surrounded by nature both in the museum grounds looking at sculpture, and outside on my bike ride before the museum opened. More from the inside (and outside) later, but here a some introductory tastes of the museum’s sculpture park.
Even before I got into the Hoge Veluwe park and its renowned Kröller Müller museum this afternoon, I enjoyed the loveliest 15km or so bike ride through forest and field with nary a car in view, en route from the train station nearest to the geographic center of NL with easy onward paths to Otterlo. I’ve now spent three hours in the fantastic museum and its magnificent extensive sculpture park, and am very glad indeed that I can go back both tomorrow and Tuesday. An excellent start to Paul’s low carbon footprint countryside adventure. If things go as planned, I’ll explore the park and various surrounding towns – two more overnight destinations to go once I leave here on Wednesday – entirely by foot and bike, til next Sunday at which point I’ll be on train back to Amsterdam. Two additional points of note: it’s very agricultural and lots of horses here, which I’m guessing is why the main paths through the woods are sandy and unsealed, with only the narrower bike path sealed. The motorized farm vehicles can navigate sand, and it’s kinder on the horses’ hooves, I assume. Also: yes, there are hills! 🙂
I made it back down to Delft for a day trip last weekend. The Prinsenhof Museum is closed for long-term renovations, so I’ve got only external shots of this compound. Starting with the 80-years war, it housed the Orange-Nassau house, which later became NL’s royalty. Funny, since I’ve been living in a constitutional monarchy, how much harder it is to find legitimately royal-type shots than, say, France, which hasn’t been a monarchy since the 1800s. Or Thailand, where it’s fairly visible as we’ll demonstrate in some future posts.
Back in March, upon my return from the short visit to BKK and Beijing, I had to get outside A’dam city limits for some “country canals” appropriate photos. Since I’m now about to spent a good deal of time – in the upcoming second week of my current so far fabulous vacation – biking, walking and training around the Dutch countryside to explore some parks and museums that have long been on my list, I expect by this time next week to have accumulated some new and lovely shots to feed future posts in this series. So herewith the last shots from a bike ride on a lovely mid-March day in the countryside south of Amsterdam.
Now and then the morning bike commute to work is so lovely that I stop and take a photo or two, such as these shots from June and July. The right-side photo shows Westerkerk, which is referenced in Anne Frank’s diaries and which sits next to both the contemporary Anne Frank Huis museum, and the fabulously-named Homomonument. (Commemorating queer folks targeted and killed during WWII.)
And yes, however lovely the gardens, water lilies and architecture are wherever work or pleasure travel have recently taken me, I breathe a sigh of relief when I get home to my lovely lake views and my own bed & kitchen again :-). I’d been saving this May morning moon-set shot for either sky lights, or city lights, but I like how it pairs with the shot above.
(so much world, so little time....) 