Trying to avoid overloading you all in January, by giving you a range of Amsterdam canal images early, with the classic tourist style above, on my way home from work a while back. The middle, below, if you’re curious, is a launch dock for kayaks, canoes, and other small boats — and connects, once you go through that claustrophobic tunnel, to Sloterplas, the lake I’ve been showing you regularly since I moved next to it last year.
An exclave of Italy within Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Lugano. Below is the dock as our boat pulled in – tap or click the photo to see it better, b/c the gallery auto-crops it a bit to fit. Probably the top of the mountain in that photo is already Italy again, but in between is a steep Swiss mountainside :-). My first four nights in Ticino were spent a 15-minute walk to the right of that marker below.
Amsterdam’s annual winter light festival along the canals opened last week, so I’ve begun seeing them on my evening and morning bike commutes. We’ve shared many festival sculptures with you in the past. (If you view full version, select the label “winter lights” which you ‘ll see below in this post itself, and many will be from this lights festival.) I’ll be interested if any of the light sculptures this year will surpass what my favorite from the three years I’ve so far been enjoying this festival :-).
Taken as the Gondola swung towards its doc up at the top of what they call, I believe, the “Little Matterhorn” which is the highest gondola station or in the alps, or maybe the only year-round skiing option in the alps, or something of that sort. (I could verify it all in guidebooks or online, but will leave readers to do so if you choose.) Suffice for now to say these three photos were all taken while swinging in a different kind of metal enclosure in mid-air 🙂 en route to another high point looking at the alps – and yes, that’s the real Matterhorn again to the left of the left line of cables.
Goodness, these are the first images I’m showing you from my lovely out-and-back train ride from Locarno down to the remote, mountainous little village of Camedo, on the border between Italy & Switzerland and a bit west of Lago Maggiore. The area is called Centovalli because of all the steep, narrow valleys created by the side-streams that feed into the main valley-bottom river, the Melezza. This is a special line that runs between Domodossola and Locarno, serving quite a few tiny villages perched on the steep slopes along the way, and with (my guide book tells me) 17 impressive ironwork bridges along the way. I wish I’d had more time to explore it – but maybe next visit!
(so much world, so little time....) 