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Coasting.107

The Dutch coastline at Ijmuiden, early morning May 14th, as our plane flew north – northwest across the North Sea after crossing the islands of Ireland and Great Britain on its flight path from Chicago to Amsterdam. The most common landing path I’ve experienced is up this way, sharp right turn over the land, then lining up for the runways in a more or less due-south pattern which I can watch from the windows of my apartment :-). Below, three photos taken each a bit later on the same trajectory.
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Urban Garden.207

County Views.147

Pretty sure this is the stream that flows out from Orr Hot Springs, as taken from the road during my morning walk there a few months ago. We’re nearly out of ‘county’ photos so the series will dry up unless Sam sends me a few that fit nicely. Most of the countries I visit these days don’t have administrative units that call themselves to or correlate well with the ‘county’ concept. But I’ll check a few dictionaries for translation and might determine that, for example, a Kreis in Germany can also fit this category. Hmm…
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Urban Entrances.137

City Views.237

For his birthday, a dream catcher we discovered during Steve’s and my explorations in Berlin a few months ago. May all his (and your) dreams come true in the year ahead 🙂

Lake Living.37

Final views of Hamburg’s lovely inner and outer Alster lakes on that lovely mid-July triathlon-morning walk along its shores.

Ah, Royalty.37

Above you’ll see the one of the most impressive and oldest original items in this semi-royal residence museum which I’ve only shown you once before even though the visit was in late May. I’m posting just about every remaining photo from my visit to the Markiezenhof now, since I have plenty of other photos for this series and currently reside and work in a nation where royal palaces are much easier to find than mountains. Strike that: in which anything one could reasonably describe as a mountain does not in fact exist, but people considered royal and thus their residences and such are generally rather plentiful. In the gallery below you’ll see some explanations of the displays including the altar above, if you’re interested. And at the bottom is the entrance to the whole compound: apparently my trip happened on day when some commercial company had rented the entry for an event or party of some sort or other, thus the folks with drinks in hand crowding the entrance.

 

Mountains.47

Turns out I did an even less thorough job of posting all my photos with images of Mt St Helena than I thought, a month or two ago. Good thing for this series, though, because I’ve really run through any other potentially-legit mountainous images (well, aside for a few from the air that I just posted or might still find…), so I might be able to keep this series in the rotation long enough to see something else I can call a mountain without too much embarrassment in time to re-stock with potential future entries. And if anyone wants to check the time stamps on these photos against past entries, do let me know if I’m inadvertently double-posting some of these images. I did a quick check myself and, no, it just seems I love to photograph this particular mountain, a lot.

From the Air.57

At the top is one last photo looking back at Lake Tahoe, which somehow escaped my attention in the last “From the Air” entry which was meant to get us from California fully across the Sierra Nevadas and into the state of Nevada. The gallery above the and image below show you more of that Nevada landscape including the easily identifiable Walker Lake. All from the my SF to Pittsburgh flight in early May.

Islands.67

The island of the title is at the top left above, middle in the closer-framed image below. We’ve shown you this island before, but taken from above looking down at this lake: my home is in the tallest building you can see just above at the top middle, and you’ve seen and will continue to see many lovely photos taken from my windows near the top left of that particular building :-).

City Lights.67

Last of the ‘City Lights’ images left from that first 2024 Berlin visit with Steve, already three months ago. Someone please explain where the time goes…
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Country Canals.77

Urban Canals.177

Indeed, right inside the city of Amsterdam but in the lovely park I’ve been showing you since I moved to my new place last year :-). Above, looking west one evening last week and below, looking east from the same foot / bike bridge over the canal. For orientation, in the photo below, the apartment from which I’ve taken all the various photos of this lovely lovely lake would be on the far side of the lake and to the left a bit (northeast).

Urban Canals.176

Before its residents voted to incorporate the lovely town of Weesp into the City of Amsterdam, I’m not sure I could have chosen to categorize the canals you’ll see in each of the photos in this post as “urban,” especially when you consider the lovely little images of coot parents building their nest in two of the photos below. But … a part of the city of Amsterdam Weesp now is, so here you see some of it’s “urban” canals and other delights.