December 2016 – traveller

Amsterdam #4

We are leaving Holland tomorrow, off to Switzerland so wandered around more today.

It was a foggy day, as I am sure many of them must be here, but good looking for all that too, boats and canals…

Rembrandts mates

More canal, I took a sunny pic of here when I was first in Amsterdam

This is a head shop, not sure about what it is that they are trying to look like, but they sell Marihuana products

Below is one of the main thoroughfares of the red light district, Amsterdam really is busy at this time of year

There is a festival of light coming up too, the below belongs to it, it changes color smoothly

And heading home

Home is at the moment one of the lit windows on the left, third floor

Up early tomorrow and herding too much luggage to 8 hours of train.

Am really pleased to have been here in Holland.

They sure do crowds here well, we went to the Van Gogh Museum early, luckily, missed out on being able to go to the Anne Frank Museum, and I chose not to join quite a few queues around Amsterdam today.

I avoided the masses and found more things that interested me.

It was a great day, and not too cold either.

Don’t know what this is about

Was looking scenic as usual

And lots of tulip selling going on

And on the door

Found a pretty cool shop filled with local stuff including the below

Then came home to try out the running business again, I am certainly not benefiting from all the walking around that I seem to do, took my phone to find my way back too

Still

#1 finish

#2 finish uninjured

#3 the rest

#4 be the fastest official time for a kiwi in an official 1/4 marathon for a short amount of the year.

Amsterdam #2

Back in Amsterdam with the whole family now, behave!

We are staying in one of these.

And I do quite like the neighborhood

Infrastructure and all

Not quite like Berlin but “street” art at the University of Amsterdam.

And of course water, water, everywhere

We had a great day though wandering in the winter sun, buying stuff and not, with crowds…

And just a little more Berlin

I like these bits of wall

And these on a shop called God Bless You

And the street over in Kreuzberg

A shelf scene in our flat

Wrangling our luggage onto the tram and S-Bahn to get to the airport tomorrow and get to experience how well sort we are for a budget airline flight.

Then family reunification with Finley.

Immer noch Berlin!

Still here, Berlin is a visually great city, bits of it some may see as tagging and grafitti but the place really is interesting

We headed down to where the big get parts of the wall remain, had camera issues though. Still, yesterday we were at checkpoint Charlie. ..

And just plain contemporary Berlin

We went to the DDR Museum too, where it felt to me that the people were being gently mocked. I think the Muldoon years leave us open to that easily.

So much to see here, might have to come back!

Berlin

Seems like a great place! Someone has set the tone rather low for our arrival though.

We are all fine.

Catchup – Basel Weissenstein Mainz Frankfurt Munich

Ok to start with a couple more pix from Basel, by the old paper mill

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And along the riverside

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And just a nicely blinged building.

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Hanspeter and I went up to Weissenstein above Solothurn in a gondola

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step 2

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Fairly bleak up there, would usually have been covered in snow

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And down below the fog we came up out of

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See,I was there

They have signs for folk like Hanspeter and Katrin that fly around these places

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Anyway I headed back to Mainz and went to Frankfurt with Birgit and checked out the Christmas markets etc, I have never really had a look around Frankfurt before.

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