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Ah, Royalty.64

Posted by  |  August 16, 2025 | Categories: England, London | Leave a comment

City Views.264

Posted by  |  August 16, 2025 | Categories: Barcelona, Spain | Leave a comment

County Views.164

Last snowy-landscape shots from the Snowhotel Kirkenes, in Norway’s Finnmark county. Above, we’re looking out from the lovely big windows in the dining room over the frozen, snow-covered fjord that runs south from the harbor, on which we also did our King Crab outing that day. At the bottom of this post, for those interested, is a panorama of the compound in which you can see, at the far left, a conical-roofed cafe building which is next the sled dog kennels (shared in our prior post from Kirkenes), then the larger modern glass & brick structure that houses check-in and tour-group visits (tour groups do short trips for the King Crab, Husky Sled Dogs, etc.), then the heated modern lodge hotel building with rounded roofs up the hill from left to right, then the large bulk of the actual frozen Snowhotel itself (where we slept on our ice beds), and at the far right the building with restaurant, sauna, changing and warming lounge reserved for overnight snowhotel guests.

Posted by  |  August 15, 2025 | Categories: Norway | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Urban Entrances.164

Below, some of the older city wall entrances from the Esquiline neighborhood I stayed in during my short June Rome visit, and above a lovely shaded walkway across the street from the park called Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II.

Posted by  |  August 15, 2025 | Categories: Italy, Rome | Leave a comment

Urban Entrances.163

A pair of entrances from KL’s lovely Botanic Garden.

Posted by  |  August 14, 2025 | Categories: Malaysia | Tags: | Leave a comment

County Views.163

The Snowhotel Kirkenes sits, of course, in Norway’s northernmost Finmark County. And houses both reindeer (whom one can feed) and huskies (whom one can pet).

Posted by  |  August 14, 2025 | Categories: Norway | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Ah, Royalty.63

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.

Posted by  |  August 13, 2025 | Categories: Netherlands, Zuid Holland | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Skylights.13

This was sunrise from my place, back on January 31 this year. Forgot I’d taken this one 🙂

Posted by  |  August 13, 2025 | Categories: Netherlands, North Holland & Amsterdam | Tags: , | 1 Comment

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Village Views.113

Posted by  |  August 12, 2025 | Categories: Norway | Leave a comment

Country Canals.103

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.

Posted by  |  August 12, 2025 | Categories: Netherlands, North Holland & Amsterdam | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Urban Canals.203

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.)

Posted by  |  August 11, 2025 | Categories: Netherlands, North Holland & Amsterdam | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Islands.93

The main city center of Tromsø is actually on the island of Tromsøya (Romssasuolu in the Northern Sami dialect of its first nation inhabitants). In the photo above, the island and thus main city center is to the left, taken as we pulled into the port. Leaving, a few hours later, we passed under that bridge you see above, and during our several-hour port call we walked a bit more than halfway across that bridge, on the other (mainland) side of which is the iconic church you’ll see in some photos below.

Posted by  |  August 11, 2025 | Categories: Norway | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

City Lights.93

Posted by  |  August 10, 2025 | Categories: Malaysia | Tags: | Leave a comment

From the Air.83

This post is my reminder to any of us sweating in northern summers that we wanted more sun, back when the days were short and snow blanketed the ground e.g. during our flight from Kirkenes down to Oslo back in January 🙂

Posted by  |  August 10, 2025 | Categories: Norway | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Mountains.83

Ok so this post is a bit more about me than usual, because…well, it’s my birthday so why not? Plus, just one week ago as this post goes live, I was still in KL, wrapping up my lovely afternoon in which I explored first the Botanic Gardens (which we’ve shown you in recent posts) and then the remarkable Malaysian Museum of Islamic Art (which we’ll show you in future posts). Since this blog tends to show you photos I might have taken quite a few weeks or months ago, I thought I’d show you some recent posts featuring the fairly-current me, sweaty and happy from climbing up to the top of the Penang Hill two weekends ago, on the eponymous island of Penang in the eponymous State of Penang in the fabulous country of Malaysia.
Quick comparison: as you see, there in Malaysia, land of true mountains, they call their 833-meter high item a “hill.” Down south here in my truly beloved adopted home of NL, some folks call the Vaalserberg and surrounding 322-meter high items “the Dutch alps’ … some of them, I think, with tongue in cheek. Or at least I hope so. This was, of course, a work visit – and generally a quite lovely and enjoyable one, I’ll say. But as you know, we don’t really talk in this personal space about the work, so instead I’m showing you various shots of one of my truly favorite MY weekend activities, walking in the heat and humidity (endurance test for an aging dude, eh?) of a Malaysian summer afternoon from the bottom to the top of this awesome hill. Pro tip: check for monkeys in the various photos below. And yes, Steve, there’s another special animal shot that’s just for you 🙂 — see if you can properly identify the one I took with you in mind…

Posted by  |  August 9, 2025 | Categories: Malaysia | Tags: , , | 1 Comment