Amsterdam Pride centers around 3 weekends in late July and early August, this year with a “Pride Walk” the first weekend, this post’s featured “Pride March” the second, and the “Pride Boat Parade” the third weekend. I finally joined or observed all three this year, including the boat parade this weekend just past. So nice to live where one is legal and less fearful of physical, social or legal harm and threats.
The days around the solstice brought spectactular sunsets from my apartment. This was nearly 11pm on the 22nd of June :-). I must cherish this, when we’re six months on and I’m winter-depressed again…
a) This canal’s actually well within the city of A’dam, so it’s urban even if it’s doesn’t look like it; b) Oops, I skipped this series on the last run of numbers :-/.
Two shots from an afternoon walk in early January at a moment when the sun had managed to break through the clouds briefly. I’m back in A’dam now with far longer days than when these shots were taken – so you’ll be seeing more A’dam and still lots from the recent US visit, in weeks / months ahead.
These are all of Erasmus Park, a smaller park which is mostly on an island created by – you guess it – the Erasmus canal. All taken on the 7th of January, one of the first reasonably sunny and clear days we’d had for several months. Below and right you’ll see the standing water which, there and other parts of town, is still standing. Everything feels waterlogged and muddy, even now when the rain hasn’t been quite so constant…
When I resumed posting last week, I started with daffodils photographed several weeks earlier, on March 7 on my way to work. Then, biking home from two lovely hours of doubles with friends late on Tuesday the 2nd of April…what should my eyes see but this lovely patch of flowers (are these daffodils? jonquils? something else?) lit by the late-evening sun.
Yes, we’ve shown you this dramatic maritime museum before, and by night as well. It really does stand out when one’s walking over to the Muziekgebouw for a concert, as was the case here in early March, during (brother) Steve’s latest visit.
Welcome back, dear readers. One or two of you have reached out to double-check that all’s well in my world. Truth to tell, it’s been a hard slog of a winter season / past six months in both life (A’dam really can get grim, wet, and windy in the winter months) and work. But there are moments of joy always, and this captures one of my finer bike rides to work recently. Imagine, if you will, the contrast between this and biking home into the wind and rain at the end of the same day. Which is a thing that has been known to happen more than one could wish, lately. I’ll try to get back to dailies soon, if not immediately.
(so much world, so little time....) 