More from that lovely flight at the end of October. The various canals above are a bit more obvious; John, I selected the one below due to your comment about how much a land of water and canals this is – at first glance you see mostly the highway, right? But look more closely and you’ll see the irrigation canals feeding the fields lower in the frame :-).
Hortus (A’dam’s botanical garden) as seen from my walk from the metro station to work the day I flew to Dhaka – the rare occasion I didn’t bike due to the luggage at had with me, hence my ability to stop and take these photos of the lovely view :-).
You’ve seen this view before, by sunlight and focusing on the flower boxes on the bridge rail. Naturally, the real-life reflection of moon on water was even clearer and more lovely than this image could capture.
I suspect that the metalwork you see to the right here is part of a supporting – retaining wall meant to keep that side of the canal wall, and street / sidewalk to that side of the canal, from collapsing. Readers may be aware that the city is investing huge sums in steadily reinforcing and rebuilding some of the oldest (many hundreds of years) canal walls in the center of the city. Many of those oldest central canals have significant areas at risk of subsidence or collapse, since they were never built to sustain the weight of tour buses, trams, trucks and tourists who now flock to the lovely city. This was the first time I’ve noticed such a support anywhere, and I couldn’t tell if this was an intentional garden or just whatever nature allowed to land and grow there…
The same afternoon that I photographed that lovely little red airplane in Small Wonders.54, I was fortunate enough to be the fourth person in a four-seater private plane that took a friend for a birthday flight over the lovely town where she has roots. Thence came this and many other shots of the canals, rivers, fields and towns of the countryside in this portion of NL, from northeast of Utrecht (Hilversum Airport) to Heusden on the Maas, which you’ve seen before as well. Above is that portion of the highly-engineered waterway system that drains the Rhine, Maas and other rivers which the Dutch at this point call The Lek. Before it crosses the Rhine-Amsterdam Canal, it’s called the Nederrijn and I’ve shown you portions where it’s called that in a past post. Below…I have a feeling that’s just a regular canal but it might be a more important one like the Amsterdam – Rhine canal…
We’ve reached the point here in the fairly-far-northern hemisphere where the sun rises disappointingly late and sets disappointingly early, I find myself counting the weeks and days until the earth starts to rotate the other way and begin shortening the southern days and lengthening our norhtern days…and if on a work-from-home day the sun peeks out from behind the clouds after my last onscreen work appointment, I automatically think “get out of the house for a walk and enjoy it while it’s shining!” The above came from one such recent walk along one of my favorite local canals.
From roughly the same spot along the Amstel, while exploring the city with different friends on different days in late September. A thing I keep meaning to do is sign up for rowing lessons, which I think are offered from this pier; though, if I do it, I’ll likely end up doing it on the Nieuwe Meer a bit closer to where I’m living.
Trying to enjoy Vondelpark and all my other urban-garden walks as much as possible while there are still leaves on the trees, especially since those leaves are changing color daily 🙂
So this was obviously some kind of competition, festival or both which I biked past on my way home from a glorious team-tennis Saturday recently. Tap or click on the image below & then enlarge it, and you’ll see a boat being lifted out of the water by a crane. I guess many of these boats were carried in by road rather than coming under their own power along canals from farther away 🙂
Same walk as the last entry: you get a sense why this is one of my favorite walk routes when the sun is shining, I trust? On the last warm swimmy day of August or early September, I followed a tennis outing (my club courts are a short bike ride behind and right, from the perspective of the photo above) with a swim on the far shore of this lake…but though we did see a few natives swimming on this outing, my bones would find the wind and air temperatures much too cold to brave those waters any more. We’re looking north across Nieuwe Meer, from the edge of Amsterdamse Bos, for anyone who wants to map-check any of it.
Back to the Bosbaan in Amsterdamse Bos on a lovely early-autumn evening. Note the moon just below the airplanes’ approach path to Schiphol, in the photos below. A well-placed bench allows one not only to contemplate the moon, the sky, the trees, the planes and the Bosbaan (the forest water track or water course, I guess) itself, but also to rest the weary legs.
You’ve seen almost this exact same view under very different light conditions in an earlier post. Neal will recognize the Scheepvaartmuseum (aka National Maritime Museum), and one of the tall ships which are (I believe?) a living part of its collection.
Nearly all the remaining photos from my 24 hours in Maastricht a couple weeks ago. I’ve shown some of the city from above and afar in an earlier post, where I also shared a bit of history. These are all from walks with my friend Steve around the city, plus some photos of the paintings people have made over the past century or so on the walls of the extensive underground tunnel network beneath Maastricht and extending as well to the Belgian side of the border. (Yes, the tunnel system has been used over the centuries both for commercial smuggling and for resistance or escape during WWII.) These were formerly underground limestone mines or quarries, but are now a tourist attraction. In that earlier post I showed you a lot of Ft Sint Pieter, which sits above some portions of the tunnel system. During one French invasion, they tried to destroy the fort by setting an explosion under it, but they got the wrong location and only collapsed the cave on themselves, according to our tour guide.
Also tucked into the gallery above is an image from inside that lovely hotel which we also showed you in another earlier Maastricht post, showing the stairs up to the restaurant from the lobby, all of which are within the soaring hall of the old cloister’s church. Remarkable place to have breakfast or a drink (the bar is at the back on the ground floor as you look at it) – thanks for the treat, Steve :-). Below: photo exhibit on my walk back to the train station about people on the move in the world, and I decided to photograph the one that shows one of MSF’s search and rescue boats at work. Below that, those city walks I keep mentioning :-), as seen from the foot and bike bridge over the Maas.
Nearly all the remaining photos from my 24 hours in Maastricht a couple weeks ago. I’ve shown some of the city from above and afar in an earlier post, where I also shared a bit of history. These are all from walks with my friend Steve around the city, plus some photos of the paintings people have made over the past century or so on the walls of the extensive underground tunnel network beneath Maastricht and extending as well to the Belgian side of the border. (Yes, the tunnel system has been used over the centuries both for commercial smuggling and for resistance or escape during WWII.) These were formerly underground limestone mines or quarries, but are now a tourist attraction. In that earlier post I showed you a lot of Ft Sint Pieter, which sits above some portions of the tunnel system. During one French invasion, they tried to destroy the fort by setting an explosion under it, but they got the wrong location and only collapsed the cave on themselves, according to our tour guide.
(so much world, so little time....) 