Above, the moon sets over Sloterplas as seen from my balcony window on the morning of 26 December. (Before hopping the train down to Den Bosch aka ‘s Hertogenbosch for that lovely day we showed you in our last post.) Below, a gallery of pretty much every other remaining “city lights” relevant photo I took in NL during 2023 but haven’t yet posted. A note about the dawn photo of storefronts: the rose-shaped light decorations, which you will notice extend all the way down the street, tell you that this street is “Rozengracht,” which means either the street alongside the Rose Canal, or Rose Canal. In this particular case, I’m unaware of there actually being a canal named Rozengracht any more, but I’m guessing there might once have been one and the street is all that remains after the city did what the Dutch have always done, redirect the water. It’s entirely possible a more-knowledgeable Dutch friend will either email me or post a public comment to educate us all :-).
Three important things happened today in my world: 1) The sun actually shone for most of the afternoon; 2) Clouds were sufficiently absent long enough for the sun to be still shining as it sank beneath the horizon (below, at 4:41:08 according to my camera — above was at 4:25:39); and, most important in my little world, the earth has rotated enough now that it actually shines in the windows on my balcony for a few short minutes at the end of its time above our horizon here. (For a comparison sunset further north and west plus several hours later, check this past post from early August: my windows face mostly north, a decent amount of west, with only one little sliver of southwest.) Note that it might have shone in a bit for a couple days now, but with clouds omnipresent nearly full-time since early October (I do not exaggerate), wouldn’t know. So this is just me sending a bonus post to let the sun feel appreciated and welcomed.
A bonus video from a harbor walk that (my cousin) Sam & I did en route to a concert during his visit in October, for those with bandwidth to view it – posting it separately in hopes it’ll work better this way.
Point 1: I realized to my chagrin that I skipped this series in the last number cycle, so we’re catching up; Point 2: The oldest canals have been collapsing bit by bit, so the city of A’dam has a massive multi-year budget to slowly shore them up, since the center city’s canals and streets are so old that they were never built for the sheer volume of tourists, buses, cars, etc that load the roads alongside them now – this being an example of the repairs on one canal in the heart of the old city.
Indeed any time I’m desperate for an island to fill a slot in this particular series (it happens – remember this one?), my life got **way** easier when I moved into this place. There are two islands visible from this vantage in my current home: both are around the middle of the image, near the far shore of Sloterplas, which is the name of this lake. The closest one is immediately in front of the large lighted building above, which happens to be the swimming complex where the Dutch national team trains. Above was a pre-sunrise full moon in late September; just below dawn clouds the morning after the beautiful sunset at the bottom.
(so much world, so little time....) 