Various shots from the lovely big park (with lake) that’s across the street from me here. There’s a sign with map in one of the photos below, where they majorly overhauled and upgraded some kids’ fun play areas (some of which I’ve shown you before) last spring. The cute sign-posts above and below predate that overhaul, but no doubt link to kids’ outings over the years. (The tent is a rare instance of someone clearly living rough here.)
I’ve stuck with just Norway posts since last Wednesday, so now I’m back in A’dam as of this morning I figured I’d reiterate my love of this city on a clear morning, circa two weeks ago on a morning bike commute to the office.
At the top of the above photo is a bit of a hidden little island that’s tucked on the edge of my local park, Sloterpark. Curious about it, I walked over to see that it’s some kind of youth club recreation area, and though I wasn’t able to photograph them well, I’d like you to imagine a dozen or so teenagers zipping through the breaks in the trees on mountain bikes. I think they’ve turned it into a mini mountain bike race course or something. Below are the usual-suspect islands along the edges of the main Sloterplas flood-control & canal-navigation lake next to which I’ve lived since August 2023.
Taking this photo early last Saturday caused me to be late enough (= 3 minutes) for that morning’s yoga class that the teacher scowled at me a bit and I felt guilty. But the frost on the railing of this foot / bike bridge caught my attention as another possible image for the water series we launched yesterday. But though I’ve shown you this windmill and canal already twice before, I like how this image came out so much that I’ve decided to post it now as my first blog photo actually taken in 2025. The foot / bike bridge, as you might see from the photo, also descends a good meter or two from its southern to its northern side, and zig-zags a bit.
During the walk on which I took all of these neighborhood-bridge photos just before Christmas, we had three separate episodes of sleet and one of rain, with sun and cloud mixing on both sides of each sleet or rain event… Winter in A’dam.
I’ve decided to begin the new year with a first entry celebrating light in the darkness of winter. And to use up just about every remaining 2024 photo that could fit into this category all in one go, thus beginning what readers have termed my annual mad rush to empty my folders of last year’s photo before I take a blog break and then resume. Among the things you’ll see if you look for them in the gallery below are (light) pears in trees on Dam Square in the heart of the city; quite a few images from this year’s light festival (which include many showing a series called “moon rise,” as well as the one saying “closed until canals freeze over:” that’s art!); a view down one of the famous canal intersections in which you can see the arches of nine different bridges all lit up as that canal travels southward under other street bridges; and two specific photos looking out from my apartment, one of which shows a building lit as a Christmas Tree and another showing the early-morning deliver early last month of a truck bringing some absolutely massive construction equipment for the new high-rise apartment complex they’re building across the street from me. (Over my morning tea, I watched the drivers and lead trucks sort out how navigate the super long truck around the traffic circle below us, including at one point taking out and then putting back a road traffic sign. And lots of other impatient cars turning and around going back the wrong way, which they could get away with b/c of how early it was.)
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.
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.
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.
(so much world, so little time....) 