Photoblog: Photo #20 - Around Marnixstraat
What do you see? Tedium of endless rows of similar looking apartments or simplicity of clean, straight lines and order of symmetry?
Keukenhof 2013
Our first visit to Keukenhof was within a day of moving to Amsterdam. We spent all of our time walking in the gardens and wistfully looked at people cycling by a field of tulips outside. I didn’t know cycling back then and the wife wasn’t sure how badly her cycling ability was atrophied after years of disuse. Come 2013, and we not only gave the garden a miss, we queued patiently outside the temporary bicycle rental shop for 40 minutes to get our bicycles.
Spring has been extremely late this year and although Keukonhof opened its doors to tourists in March as usual, there wasn’t much to see till late April. However, by May, things were back on track and we got our fill of fields of tulips stretching for miles and miles:
Although tulips dominate the fields around Keukehof, you do come across other varieties of flowers:
I remember this field not only because of a strong, pleasant smell that the breeze carried to us but also because of the houses that looked perfectly colour coordinated with the flowers.
It was an extremely windy day and cycling occasionally took some effort despite the well-maintained, dedicated biking lanes. We kept stopping for breaks in these fields and kept forgetting our fatigue.
Although you see millions of tulips around you, you’d be hard pressed to find a shop selling a bouquet for your home. You do come across these small, unmanned stalls that work on honour system. The hand-written signs tell you how much you should pay for each bouquet. You take the bouquet and leave the correct amount in a box near by.
The park closes at 6:00 PM and the bicycle rental an hour after that. With the evening getting colder and wind fiercer, we reluctantly turned back to return but took our own sweet time, stopping several times along the way:
Kenukenhof has now become an annual spring ritual of sorts for us, the sort that your year feels incomplete without.
Photoblog: Photo #19 - Pythonbrug
We had cycled to these bridges connecting Borneo Island and Sporenburg two years ago. I had just learned cycling back then and suddenly Amsterdam was full of not-quite-walkable-but-easily-cyclable places to explore. They are shaped like enormous dragons (or python or anaconda depending on how unimaginative you want to be) and are quite a spectacle.
The first time I saw these lamps attached to the bridges, I thought that witches had parked their brooms and conical hats there.
Spring 2013 edition
Amsterdam might not be a big city but it is well appointed with beautiful, open, green parks. They are quite a spectacle during spring. We were in Westerpark a week ago and spent several hours under the rows of trees covered in flowers.
Cycling to (and in) Westerpark on a sunny weekend afternoon for a small picnic is one of those simple pleasures of life that cost you nothing but leave you happy and relaxed. The municipality does its bit by providing these plastic sheets to sit on and, when done, to neatly bundle and throw away your trash in.
Photoblog: Photo #18 - Queen’s Day
Not a big fan of selective colouring but couldn’t resist it this one time:
This was our second Queen’s Day. We had slunk off to Luxembourg last year but since this year the Queen was abdicating in favour of her son, we decided to stay on and enjoy the show. We weren’t disappointed.
Photoblog: Photo #17 - Spring in Amsterdam
Spring is late in Amsterdam, but it has not so much arrived as burst onto the scene:
