Tag: street scene

Amsterdam’s Oldest Public Park

Wertheimpark, first opened to the public in 1812, is named after a prominent 19th century Jewish banker and philanthropist. Sitting by the side of a canal and near the city’s botanical garden, the park has quiet paths lined with stately, lush green trees, several notable trees (that is, trees over 100 years old), and plenty of open space for dogs to play and neighbors to meet when they are keeping an eye on their playing dogs.

Just off to one side of the open field, there is the artist Jan Wolkers’ “Never Again Auschwitz” memorial to people who died at Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps. The memorial is also referred to as “Broken mirrors.”

Amsterdam Glows in the Morning

I was at the beginning of a walk that would take me to Amsterdam’s botanical garden and the small but lovely Wertheimpark when I walked into this image. Thinking back, it seems to me the walk had a specific destination, but a month later sitting in Hoi An, I cannot remember what that might have been. The sun was still low in the sky at 7:30 in the morning; the light on the tree and the water literally glowed. The dome of St. Nicholas Church is in the center of the photo. Amsterdam is genuinely a beautiful place.

Though I did not know it at the time, I was standing on the historic Armbrug bridge when I took this photo. The original bridge dates back to 1538; the current bridge, the product of a renovation undertaken in 1988, is not particularly memorable. I happened to run across the history of the bridge when I decided to post the image above and went looking for where I was standing when I took the photo. Not that anyone has asked, but as a point of information, I use an application called Mapy.com when I do map searches online. While Google Maps is better for finding nearby restaurants, unlike Mapy, it had nothing about the Armbrug bridge. In fact when it comes to using a map as a map, Mapy comes out ahead of Google in virtually every respect. Developed and headquartered in the Czech Republic, Mapy has Android and Apple apps, and works fine on my Windows PC. Fed up dealing with criminal organizations like Google? Check out Mapy. And that is today’s unsolicited advertisement.

The Old Town Hall, Ribe, Denmark

The old town hall of Ribe pictured in part here is in the center of the old village near the town square and Ribe Cathedral. The original town hall on this site was built in 1496, though it is not clear to me whether the building pictured here is the original structure or a newer one. Today the old town hall houses a museum that I did not visit and occasionally hosts local weddings.

Mostly I like the colors and textures in this image: the wall with old and new red brickwork, the wooden door with its wrought iron decorations, granite foundation stones of grays and browns, and cobblestones in the foreground. The street light in front of the building casts a shadow giving the image depth.

The Daily Commute, Copenhagen

The people in this photo are commuting to work first thing in the morning. Copenhagen is definitely a bike-friendly city. There were people biking everywhere I went in the city, almost entirely on public bike paths. Some people were out for exercise and recreation, but it seemed to me that for most, bicycles provided basic transportation – from home to workplace and back, for shopping, going out on the town and more.

In looking around for information about biking in Europe and Copenhagen in particular, I ran across the Copenhagenize Index (https://copenhagenizeindex.eu/) that, according to its website “is an evidence-based benchmark tracking to what extent the world’s cities have progressed in making cycling safe, convenient, and mainstream.” If you are interested, the organization’s 2025 index report is available for download as a pdf.

The report ranks the world’s top 30 cities for bicycling; Copenhagen is number two. Three of the top 30 cities are in Canada, none in the United States. Portland and Minneapolis are ranked 35 and 44, respectively.

Several days ago Sean Duffy, the Trump-licking moron wasting space as Secretary of the US Department of Transportation, complained that bike lanes are some sort of DEI initiative. When the index ranking the stupidest countries ever is published, no question where the United States will place.

Copenhagen’s Iconic Nyhavn Canal

The iconic – or cliche – it’s your choice – photo of Copenhagen invariably shows a row colorful buildings along the Nyhavn. I had always assumed that Nyhvan was a Copenhagen neighborhood featuring a lot of colorful architecture. As usual, on this trip, I did not do enough homework about the places I would visit before showing up at the scene. In fact Nyhvan is a canal commissioned by the Danish King Christian V and completed in 1675. The Nyhvan let ships unload trade goods and fish in Kongens Nytrov (Kings Square), an area at the end of the canal also developed by Christian V, who did a great deal to expand Copenhagen during his reign. In any event, it is only the roughly 300m waterfront of the Nyhvan Canal that is lined with colored buildings and this appears to be the only place such buildings are to be found in Copenhagen.

Over time, as ocean-going ships became larger, only smaller ships engaged in local trade came into the canal. By the mid-20th century even this trade had declined and there were no ships visiting Nyhavn. Efforts to revitalize the canal began in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, in addition to traditional buildings of many colors, there are several old sailing vessels moored to the piers along the waterway. The entire Nyhavn canal area serves as a sort of outdoor museum for Copenhagen.

My own Nyhavn colorful buildings cliche photo was taken on a gray, overcast morning; the light was very flat. If I had been paying more attention to content and less to exposure and color in the flat light, I probably would have chosen a group of buildings that did not include a Chinese restaurant. The place seems a little incongruous in a photo that is supposed to be representative of traditional Copenhagen.

I took the photo below with my back to the buildings in the photo above. It shows some of the sailing ships docked in the canal, and gives more sense of the overall look of the Nyhavn area. This was taken on the day after my first visit to Nyhavn. I stopped briefly on my way to another part of Copenhagen to get a photo of the old boats docked along the canal. The morning offered up some hazy sunlight that gives the entire scene a bit of a glow.