A very happy New Year to all of you

The dutch tradition on 31 December are oliebollen en appelbeignets, these are my creations homemade.

I wish all my blogfriends a very happy 2011

Bird watch

I become a bit bored by snow photo's, but ok, this one is different. Pim has to be allert to see flying birds, but he is not a keen catcher so they are safe. He always walks loudly mauw, mauw through the garden so the birds are warned to fly away. He is a real gentleman.

Icy

Can you imagine how we have get trough this tunnel every day, with skates on?

Cologne (2)

A few impressions of the Christmas market.

Back to snow again.

We're having a very big snowfall at the moment. These photo's are made by my husband when he went to the supermarket behind our home.

Christmas in Almere

To stimulate people to shop till they drop you can have your children a slee-ride in the middle of the shopping mall.

You can also have a bob-sleigh ride between the shops. I think it is a bit over the top all this "fun" .

After all we are not living in the mountains aren't we?

Adventure in the City

The man in the orange jacket let us in to the stairs down.

Last week when we were walking in Amsterdam we saw at a tramway-stop people vanishing in the ground entering the two red towers at the first photo. It was so strange, we went for a look where they had gone.

It appaered it was possible to visit the work in progress of the new underground. You could go down with several iron stairs and suddenly their was a little viewpoint to have a look at man working in the deep.

It was so weird, one moment you're walking in a crowdy shopping street, the next you are looking in a complete different world under the same street and then your're in the street again.

It was a kind of a Alice in Wonderland experience, or Harry Potter.

Amsterdam by night

Grand magazin "de Bijenkorf" (Beehive).

Dam square with the Christmas tree from Norway.

The Waag (Weighing-house)

This time of the year Amsterdam is so beautiful at night with all the extra lights.

Memories

The remembrance of the death of John Lennon was in the press this week and it took me back to 1964 when I saw the Beatles live in Amsterdam. They visited the city on a bright sunny day and made a canal tour where some people were so excited that they jumped in the water and tried to reach the boat. I was 16 years old and stood with my best friend for ours along the canal at their hotel to see them. It was such a memorable day, Amsterdam went mad and all people who were there will always remember this.

You maybe wonder who the strange guy at the left is, Ringo was ill and couldn't come so they took this guy with them to replace him, but I liked Paul so I didn't care.

Look at the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Or0LTcn58&NR=1

Meeting

Yesterday I met my former neighbour girl proud walking with her firstborn of eight weeks.

Handbag

To celebrate the opening of several expensive shops in the department store "de Bijenkorf" this huge handbag of Hermes stands in the shop window. I am not sure this is the famous "Kelly" bag.

Theater

To see something different than snow we went to the theater to have a nice evening with a stand up comedian Dolf Jansen. Not know in the foreign countries but he is very humoristic.

The theater is very new from 2007 and designed by two Japanese architects named SANAA. They are known for their minimalistic buildings so is this one too. I must admit I don't like it so much, I think when you enter a theater it must embrace you but here you enter a clinical white hall with almost nothing in it. When you want a coffee, you have to drink it standing in this hall because there are only a few chairs. I have been in two other buildings of the couple in New York and Essen and they are all the same, a white cube. Well see:

SANAA  Dolf Jansen 

Welcome in Siberia

I am afraid my photo's will become a bit monotone the coming time. Everything is covered white and there is coming more this evening. It is almost impossible to bike so I am walking all the time, yesterday along the dike, you hardly see anybody on the streets, a bit surrealistic. I felt myself like Remi in "Alone in the world".

Skating in Amsterdam

We never had Christmas markets in the Netherlands, you could go for it to Belgium or Germany for a day, but we have discovered a new way of entertainment. So on the Rembrandt square in Amsterdam  is a market and a small skating court where you can hire skates.
But as the winter is going on with very low temperatures the Dutch are in an other skating fever, the "Elfstedentocht" a skating tour of almost 200 km in the north of the Netherlands. Every winter when it starts freezing everybody starts to speculate, will it be or will it not and when.
See Elfstedentocht