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Country Canals.88

The stream above gets channeled into the pond below, and I believe becomes part of the water source for surrounding villages including Zermatt. But not sure.

Village Views.98

These are all from walks during my first afternoon & evening in Bissone, the lovely mountain & lakeside village in which I spent four days and and nights on the east shore of Lake Lugano, across a causeway and bridge from Melide, which has the train station. Pretty sure we’ve shown you the snake emblem (above) of the town before; if not, you’ll see it again in future for sure b/c these aren’t the last of my photos from that eye-opening visit more than a month ago already.

Signs of the City.108

In traveling from Zermatt to Melide  in early November, I changed trains at Domodosola, just south of the alps in Italy’s Piedmont region. I had roughly an hour’s layover here, during which I found an outside bench and took these photos while I ate the portable lunch I’d packed that morning before taking the first train down from Zermatt. In one of the shots of the train station below, you’ll see a reference to the Centovalli rail line that runs from here up to Locarno – a bit of which we’ve shown you before, when I came down the other direction later that week. 🙂

Bridges.8

There are several pieces of infrastructure that bridge water in this post from the Vaartse Rijn train station in Utrecht, where I happened to be a few weeks ago while visiting some friends recently out of hospital in various parts of NL. None of these various forms of “bridge” are for cars. Just above, you see the Vaartse Rijn going generally left to right, and a side canal heads up to the top and left, bridged by a bike and foot bride into the station area. The trains themselves cross on the elevator tracks in the top right corner, and passengers get to and from those tracks on stairs, some of which also cross the water itself. I do so love living in a country that spends money on non-automotive infrastructure!

Bridges.7

 

Bridges.6

Oops, somehow I skipped this lovely new series when I ran through the “6” set, so now I need to catch up. Since we’ve shown you bridges in Paris and Berlin so far in this series, I’m home to Amsterdam for this first catch-up post, a lovely pedestrian bridge (bikes also, but the paths to the left side there aren’t paved and do wind a fair bit through a surprisingly wild patch of parkland) the park across the street from me.

Village Views.97

Last shots from my early-July stay in Heusden for a work week, with one shot from a bike ride I did across the Maas in Geldersland, the church from the town I believe was Spijk below right.
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Signs of the City.107

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Coasting.117

Urban Garden.217

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Small Wonders.257

City Views.247

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Urban Entrances.147

Ah, Royalty.47

Yes, Mary Stuart aka Queen of Scots was also Queen of France for a while too. The sign at the bottom notes that these are a series of sculpture of famous queens and other women of power and influence through the ages. Taken in the Jardins de Luxembourg, adjacent to the Palais de Luxembourg where France’s Senate now convenes, but which Louis XIII seems to have built for his Mom, Marie de Medici (another woman of power), after her husband passed and left her queen mum instead of queen :-), as it were.