The darker photos are both from February 2nd this year – so slightly more than six months ago. The sunrise photo below is from just now – took it out my living room window to show not only the lovely morning-cloud sky lights, but how big all those new buildings have grown this year! My last Urban Canals showed you the Pontsteiger Hotel as seen along one of our canals; above, if you enlarge and look to the right of the big crane, you’ll see it as I used to see it out my windows here 😦
Two last 2025 A’dam sunrises, in November (left) and June (right). And once the sun moves farther north again, you’ll be able to start seeing how far along that construction across the street has come.
These’ll be the last “city lights” shots from A’dam for 2025, since I’m currently on another continent, photos of which will soon begin appearing in this space 🙂
That was 5:21am on May 21st, as the sun was still moving further north; it passed back through this building on its way back south, about July 21. I was out of town then so I missed it. As I miss the sun almost entirely these days, since we’ve reached the period of the year where it doesn’t shine through on this north side of my apartment, but only for a short bit of the afternoon from my western and one southern window. Ah well. Below, you can see both how the building site across the street from me was progressing three weeks later, and how much farther the sun had moved north, by the 12th of June. I should remember to take a photo so you can see how far they’ve come on that construction – it’s moving fast.
This was May 21st as the rising sun headed further north. I missed its pass through this building last week on its way back south :-(, because I’ve been out of town for a bit.
Our coastal-Norway cruise wrapped up early Sunday in Kirkenes, a town closer to Murmansk than to any other large-ish city I know of. It’s at 69N degrees; the arctic circle starts at 66N degrees. The above photo, taken shortly before noon, and two minutes after the take-off photo below right so at whatever altitude our plane had gained by that point, shows you the sun managing to peak both through some clouds, and over the horizon. We knew that at ground level the sun had only begun to peak above the horizon the week before we arrived in Kirkenes, and in general the most we had during the three full days we spent inside the arctic circle were maybe five hours of long dawn / dusk light (the same, with the sun actually above the horizon and maybe peaking through clouds) for a couple hours in the middle of it. It messes with one’s head and sense of meal and bedtimes, when full dark lasts until 9am and resumes by 2pm 🙂
Last day of my third full year based here in Amsterdam, a city in which I’m now always happy to “come home.” It celebrates its 750th anniversary next year, with that light shining up into the sky originating from that first settlement. There’ll be anniversary celebration events all year, which you can check out if you’re planning or thinking about visiting the city. I’ll share a few shots of a recent sunrise over Sloterplas (where I live), to wrap up this year in ‘city views’ from home. 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 