My recent post from the royal palace in A’dam caused cousin & occasional guest contributor Sam to point out that he’d seen plenty of SPQ “x” signs all over during his visit last year. Herewith two examples he sent, one from Haarlem (left), the other from Amsterdam. Thanks for the sharp eyes, Sam 🙂
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.
All from the Royal Palace in A’dam, which we showed you once before when we’d just returned from the US and had no backlog of remotely legit “royal-ish” stuff to share with you. I’ve now stocked up on royal stuff from Berlin as well as a few different corners of NL so I can just share all these overly-impressive and imposing doorways, sitting rooms, waiting rooms, etc. etc. all in one big post. Fascinating are all the coats of arms in the gallery below, with SPQA at the top. (As in, Senate & People of the City of Amsterdam in direct imitation of classical Rome’s SPQR.) I’d never noticed that before, but have since seen the same thing on a bridge or two around town. One thing I will say about constitutional monarchies such as this one: they allow the State (by which int’l law means Nation State, not New Jersey or Alaska) itself to retain a certain dignity that rises above the politics of the moment. IMHO the US has lately tended to test the value of a single person being both head of state and head of government, often with disconcerting results when it comes to the dignity of the State itself…
At the Royal Palace in A’dam (which started life as city hall back in the 1600s or so), one walks through the impressively intimidating doorway in order to pass from the main hall into the throne room. Which, on the day of my recent visit, had nothing I could identify as a throne, thus this as the most impressive royal-symbolic image from that visit: we’ve got Atlas carrying the world, and justice being meted out just below…and it’s past those eyes you must enter the throne room. I think that upstart, wannabe bus we featured in our prior post would fit easily within this hall, plenty of room to spare. Ah, the symbolism of it all, eh? 🙂
Above: Stadsloket is one of the city’s administrative services offices, which are scattered around A’dam’s many neighborhoods. Below, two last photos taken along the marathon’s route in October, just west of the Rijksmuseum which you can see in the pics.
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.
Cheating slightly here, since one shot was really taken in a village and the other in a city, but I think one must not continue the whole holiday-lights thing too far into the new year…
(so much world, so little time....) 