Today marks my 365th day in a row of posts here, and as the day dawns where I’m now living (also, as it happens, when this post will appear for you dear readers), I should be back in the air on yet another weary international flight for work. Or perhaps in another airport for another connection. (I’m scheduling this post before I head to the airport, if you’re curious…)In any case, it felt appropriate to open the “last day” with a new series, since any of you who’ve followed the blog over the years know I usually have a camera at hand and try to enjoy the perspective from the air when I’m on these long flights, so it’s always likely that there’ll be other opportunities for an entry in this new series. All the photos in this post were taken in the span of ten minutes as our flight approached Abu Dhabi’s airport in the wee hours of a morning last November. Interesting, what serious irrigation (and wealth to create that irrigation) can make of a desert, isn’t it?
Not NL, nor is the last post. A Christmas trip across a border; location metadata available for those curious enough to open the “full site” view :-). Hugs.
The internal entrance above is inside the building you’ll see in the final photo of this post from Porto, which features a remarkable array of art by Joan Miro. Below left, an outside entrance from another part of Porto (which reminded me of this entrance from Prague, the city which inspired this particular series), and one from Madeira as well.
I’d forgotten these lovely camellias from a garden in Porto, and thought we were done with our small wonders for the current cycle…then I did one last check on the “Porto” folder and was reminded of this rainy walk with lovely blooms last month. If one looks, one can usually find beauty just about anywhere. Readers – especially you, Jean – are encouraged to correct me or confirm that indeed these are camellias :-). (It’s early in the morning here, and I’m scrambling for these posts before I bike off to work in the rain…)
More from that early-morning connection in Abu Dhabi’s airport last November. It seems I’ve maybe worked through all my remaining photos in such a manner that I can not only still bring you two posts per day until I hit my 365-day mark on Sunday, but actually have more or less no photos anyone would want me to post, once I’ve done that. And this grim weather here in A’dam means I’m rarely inspired – a lovely long sunny walk yesterday happened with a colleague, which meant I was so busy with work talk that I didn’t think to pull out the camera and take some canal photos. Ah well, the canals aren’t going anywhere and the sun will be back at some point even here. 🙂
Tee hee, those of you viewing this in email or on a small screen without the metadata tags will be lost. 🙂 It’s a desert city at whose airport I transferred while going in and out of Bangladesh back in late November – a trip that’s only showed up on this blog in two posts so far, I believe. I’m 99% confident that the green bit (the “park” of this title, as in something green) is a golf course. No comment. A short exploration of this city on maps (it’s tagged for those of you who choose to open the “full site”) doesn’t tell me what that red-roofed stadium-like structure is. On Sunday I will have posted at least one post per day for 365 days, and then we’ll take break. Hence my dive further afield now that we’ve exhausted nearly all of the photos I took while visiting Madeira last month… 😦
A brief stop on the magere brug (thin bridge) over the Amstel, on an extremely rare clear morning bike ride to work last week. We’re looking north along the Amstel towards the building which houses the National Ballet & Opera, plus city hall for A’dam, with the moon setting off the the west.
While our Amsterdam weather since December hasn’t been nearly as dramatic & dangerous as California’s, it’s still featured more rainy days than one really needs. So far as I can recall, the sun has managed to peek through the clouds on four days or so since about the week before Christmas, and on only one of those did it stick around very long.
This means getting out to parks is quite simply hard and minimally appealing. Seeing anything visually appealing once there, let alone bothering to take the phone out and photograph it? Even harder. Nonetheless, there was sufficient break in the rain — even a fleeting moment of sun — to lure me into the park on my way home from the gym this morning. By the time my camera was out, the sun had vanished. In the seconds between when I took the photo above and the photo below, the sleet had begun. Ah, well, gardens are still gardens, even in the sleet and wind. 🙂
Today marks my 365th day in a row of posts here, and as the day dawns where I’m now living (also, as it happens, when this post will appear for you dear readers), I should be back in the air on yet another weary international flight for work. Or perhaps in another airport for another connection. (I’m scheduling this post before I head to the airport, if you’re curious…)
