Lamp post

Made me laugh when I passed this lamp post.

Skywatch Friday

Yesterday we had a beautiful warm day 20 degrees C! (68F). We went out biking and I spotted this person high in the sky. I thought it was a parachute but it didn't came down and I heard a motor. I had never seen this before so I googled a bit and it is "Powered Paragliding" (PPG). You have a backpack motor connected to a big spinning propeller. Look here how it looks like.

See for more skywatches here

Fashionable

Doesn't she looks great?

Exciting Amsterdam

It is almost Easter and Amsterdam is ready to welcome the tourists. Put your survival shoes on!

No tramway here, these works always takes months in Amsterdam, the street looks like this from 12 january.

Taphophile Tragics # 12

In 2009 I visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum at Hyde Park, NY.  The president is buried here on the family estate Springwood in the Rose Garden together with his wife Eleanor.

In the garden is a lovely sculpture of the two, Franklin was born in 1882 and died in 1945, Eleanor was born in 1884 and died in 1962. He was the 32-nd president of the US from 1933-1945.

The family home of Franklin.

 In 1921 Franklin felt ill with poliomyelitis which paralysed his lower torso. He had to use a wheelchair and for that reason another house was built on the estate which had no stairs. The museum is in here and is very interesting with all kind of personal things and the original decorated rooms. Have a look here.

This is my contribution to Taphophile Tragics

Monday Mural

This tile painting I saw in the "Leiden-street" in  Amsterdam. Christiaan Huygens  (1629-1695) was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies elucidating the nature of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan, the invention of the pendulum clock and other investigations in timekeeping, and studies of both optics and the centrifugal force.

I have no idea why his portrait is on this facade, I couldn't find any connection with Amsterdam. He was born and lived in the Hague and studied in Leiden. Maybe the name of the street?

See for more Monday Murals here

Sunday Bridges

I have seen many strange vehicles in the Amsterdam canals but a floating bus I hadn't seen before. This one looks like a normal bus just splashed in the water. I have done this once in the US and found it a rather scary expierence to drive into the water from the road. However that bus was a combination of a bus on a boat and didn't looked like a real bus so much.

This one is different and looks even more scary. I read you can make a tour with this one from the airport Schiphol when you have a long transfer and you don't want to hang around there but want to see the city. So you can drive under the Skinny Bridge with a bus!

See for more Sunday Bridges here

 

Here you see the testdrive/float.

Guess what

What do you think this is, many people call it "the bath tub".

It is the new expansion of the "Stedelijk Museum" (Museum for Modern Art) in Amsterdam which you can see on the left. We have waited for eight! years to see the result, all those years the museum has been closed and it still is. Maybe I am a pessimist but I think this is a rather dominant addition to the old building.

From this side it looks a lot better, when you don't see the other (old) buildings. They plan to open the museum september 2012, we keep our fingers crossed.

Apple Store

This week Apple has opened their first Flagship Store in Amsterdam at the "Leidsesquare". The impressive  building used to be a fashion-palace "Hirsch & Cie" for the upper ten from 1912-1976. In the seventies it had to close because younger people didn't want to wear the "old-fashioned" clothes. A Bank has used the building until 2011 when Apple started to renovate the inside.

The famous glass stairs,  but they had to remove a part of the floor to get a vide.

When it opened last saturday there was a huge queue around the building, but at a weekly day it was a bit quiet.

They tried to keep some old elements as the pilars and illumination equipement with copper, but I am not sure I like the result.

Streetview

This is the group of "brown handbags?"

Chatting

To belong to a certain social group you wear Ugg boots and have a fur collar.

Mushrooms and Spores.

I hadn't been in Amsterdam for two weeks so last Sunday I really had to go. First we saw a car-driver cracking his car against an "Amsterdammertje" the red brown steel bollard you see along the canals to prevent parking. Then we had to avoid a weird shouting man waving his arms in the air, and then we passed this shopwindow. I couldn't believe my eyes, what was this?

We were curious so went inside and it happened to be a "Mushroom Paradise", an urban mushroomfarm in the centre of Amsterdam! This projection is called the "Secret Sounds of Spores". A laser beam shines under a mushroom and the Spores which are falling, flash for a moment in the light. A camera sends it to a computer where it is converted in a computersignal that gives a musical sound. Can you believe it!

This installation is called "Body of Changes". The mould Schizophyllum Commune is used as a new method to bury people. The wrapping of felt gets moulds which show the expansion and the rotting which normally only can be seen underground.

Well it was an interesting afternoon, a combination of laboratory and art, never a dull moment in Amsterdam.

Monday Mural

This building called "Vrankrijk" in Amsterdam was squatted since 1982, to prevent demolishing and a new appartment building. In 1992 the squatters obtained the building and there is a cafe at the ground floor. The inhabitants have a love and hate relation with the city counsel and the police as you can see at the sign right. The painting says "Boom" at the left above.

See for more Monday Murals here

Sofietje

I haven't shown you Sofietje for a while, so here a few pictures of her. Here she is showing her belly.

A close-up.

Always in the play mood, our floor is covered with little balls of wool, silver foil and mousies which she all in no time bangs under a sofa or a cupboard. We are streched out on the floor each day to collect all her toys from hidden places.

Weekend Reflections

A Weekend Reflection in Rotterdam a few months ago. Since the flu I still have a lack of energy to go out for making photos and the weather is drizzly and cloudy here every day not so inspiring.

See for more reflections here.