Peacock Island (Pfaueninsel) in the Wannsee – Havel lake and canal network in the SW corner of Berlin along the border with Brandenburg. When West Berlin was surrounded by a walled and guarded GDR, this was a lovely natural escape from the city vibe, which I myself first visited with my mother in May 1980. Steve – now a renowned and published scholar in German studies – and I spent a delightful late-May weekend in Berlin recently, during which in addition to fabulous educational narration from him, we did a lovely cruise during which we also stopped off and re-explored this island, a former royal back-to-nature pleasure garden from the 18th Century, complete with peacocks to add to the vibe, and royal dairy built to look like a monastery.
Mountain views and a few California poppies, all from a lovely day’s walk in central Mendocino County on the last day of April. If you’re on the full view website here, you can look for “Mendocino County” as a “tag” further down, and select it to view past Mendocino posts which explain a bit of what you’re seeing. Orr Hot Springs is tucked deep in a canyon in the photo above and some of the photos below.
If look closely at the above photo, you’ll see a bay coming in from the Pacific at the top right, carving inland to the top-center. That’s Monterey Bay. I’m posting all the remaining photos from our mid-April approach to SFO, following the flight from Amsterdam which, as we’ve shown you in prior posts, cut over the norther half of Greenland before plunging south along the Pacific Coast. This photo was taken in the midst of our complex circling in order to line up for (north-facing) approach to SFO. If you’re interested in better understanding the geography, just open a map and see how the “peninsula” sits between the (more enclosed) SF bay and the open, further south Monterey Bay. Here we’re beginning a clockwise circle from our southbound course, so I’m looking south and we’re still turning west and north. The shots below follow the rest of that trajectory in order, although the first shot was taken a minute or so before the one above. Enjoy 🙂
I first took the photo below while biking across the bridge en route to Muiderslot, which you’ve now seen twice before. I figured I was focusing on the island farther out in what I (and you, depending how much you read this text) now know is the Markermeer and not in fact a bay…I was pondering whether I could call it “coasting” or not :-). But then I got all the way across the bridge and saw up closer that this building is an island unto itself. You’re seeing it from two sides — the bridge you see below right and above center is the same bridge. Me further down is a different bridge that I’m just adding so you see I wear a helmet and am thus considered weird, here.
Consider this my memorial to Rosa Luxemburg. You’d think the work I do would inure me to cruelty and murder, but it doesn’t. If you don’t understand why I’m finding this post strangely hard to finalize and would like to, google either her or Landwehr Canal. She was a person, and her friends and family mourned her in ways I must assume were personal not just politcal.
When we first showed you Muiderslot, this castle to the east of Amsterdam, we didn’t bother introducing it. If you’re open to a bit of geeky text on Dutch water-management, read on. Otherwise, just enjoy the photos taken when I biked out and back (a lovely full day only possible this time of year when the days are long enough) both to the see it and to re-stock for this series with images taken in places that can legitimately lay some claim to being at least royalty-related. 🙂
The two photos above right and left show you the narrow channel by which the Vecht River enters what is now the Markenmeer, which is now an almost-entirely freshwater lake. But if you click or tap to open and enlarge the map in the middle, from a display in the castle, you’ll see that until 90 years ago, both the Markenmeer and Ijsselmeer to its north used to be the Zuider Zee which was an open bay off the North Sea, with open flow of water both fresh and salty in and out. First, the Dutch built the Afsluitdijk (which I’d assume is the biggest of the many dikes the Dutch have built over the years – but haven’t yet confirmed) at the far north end, mostly for flood protection though it now also provides a direct road connection between North Holland and Frisia or Friesland. Then, in the 1970s, they did yet another dike that separated that larger former-bay-now-lake into two lakes, Ijsselmeer and Markenmeer and also connected parts of North Holland more easily with the newly-drained polders that are now in the province of Flevoland, without having to go through or around Amsterdam over land.
Both are now almost entirely fresh water reservoirs and flood-control areas that are huge enough to be significant ecosystems and watery playgrounds in their own right. When I first moved here nearly three years ago, I rapidly concluded, as to Amsterdam’s street grid and public engineering, that “it’s all about the water.” The longer I live here, the longer I realize just how right I was, and that it’s ain’t just the capital city but the whole country that’s all about the water. Links above will tell you more, but if you just search for Ijsselmeer on google maps, you’ll see confirmation in their one-sentence summary.
Taken four minutes apart early last Wednesday, my first week back at work after the long break. Rainy and cold weather lately, but some consolations like this 🙂
Peacock Island (Pfaueninsel) in the Wannsee – Havel lake and canal network in the SW corner of Berlin along the border with Brandenburg. When West Berlin was surrounded by a walled and guarded GDR, this was a lovely natural escape from the city vibe, which I myself first visited with my mother in May 1980. Steve – now a renowned and published scholar in German studies – and I spent a delightful late-May weekend in Berlin recently, during which in addition to fabulous educational narration from him, we did a lovely cruise during which we also stopped off and re-explored this island, a former royal back-to-nature pleasure garden from the 18th Century, complete with peacocks to add to the vibe, and royal dairy built to look like a monastery.
(so much world, so little time....) 