That’s the coast of North Holland at the top, with the port of Ijmuiden (“mouth of the Ij,” which is the industrial-sized canal that runs from Amsterdam directly over to the North Sea) in the top-left quadrant and the lovely town of Castricum to the right. All as seen on Tuesday morning as our plane oriented itself towards the runway at Schiphol.
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…
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.
The quaint and historic eastern-Netherlands town of Zutphen on the Ijssel, where I spent last weekend playing lots of tennis in my first-ever “tennis camp” weekend with lessons and matches. Great fun and nice to get away for a bit.
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.
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 :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 