Amsterdam at Night / Delft

On August 23, 2026 0 Comments - Photography, Travel

***please try to look at these photos on a bigger screen. Your phone will crush all the details***

This is the second post in a five part series. To start at the beginning CLICK HERE.

Prinsengracht Concert in Amsterdam

Once a year, the largest free classical music concert in the Netherlands happens on a canal on the Prinsengracht. A big orchestra is set up on a floating barge in the canal where the public can gather around for a night time serenade. The rich and influential Amsterdammers get front row seats on the water and anyone else who wants to see it has to camp out all afternoon to secure a good spot. There were so many people by the time we got there that we couldn’t get close enough to see anything at all, but at least we could hear it.

Crowds of people fill the narrow streets and bridges surrounding the orchestra barge. Packed like herring!
People come out in boats to listen too. I messed up my camera settings so many of my pictures were blurry but I thought this one looked like an oil painting so I included it here. If you zoom in on the boats or the people you will see what I mean.
Night time along the canals.
Amsterdam cat way up in a window watching all the people below. I don’t see all that many cats outside in the city but lots of window kitties.
Almost all of the boaters had a table of wine, cheese and other snacks on board to enjoy with the music. I like the way the people on the bench are all watching this floating picnic pass by.
Outdoor restaurant patio right on the edge of a canal.
Patio glow. There is a lot going on in this picture if you look around. Good action and good faces too.
Quiet canals at night lit by old lamp posts and a near-full moon.

Anne Frank House

The slightly taller, lit up building with the blacked-out windows is the Anne Frank house. She and her family hid in a secret annex behind the top 2 floors for two years without ever going outside. Their hiding place is still there, just as it was when they were discovered by the Gestapo and eventually deported to Auschwitz. The furniture was removed by the Nazis after their arrest but the rooms, kitchen fixtures, the hinged bookcase hiding the annex entrance, the staircases, the attic, the toilet and Anne’s pictures which she pasted to her bedroom walls are still there. The house is now a museum open to the public where you can see all of this plus Anne’s original hand written diaries and notebooks as well as any personal effects that were left behind. I visited the museum early one morning to see all of this. It was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had. It is not really possible to describe it here so I won’t say any more. Read the book and visit in person and you will know.
A glow of blue light above the orchestra in the distance. The tall tower belongs to Westerkerk church. This is the church Anne Frank writes about in her famous diary. She could see the clock face from the attic of their hiding place and hear the church bell ring every 15 minutes which, she wrote, was a source of great comfort. The church sounds gave her some small connection to the outside world during her two years in hiding.

Day Trip to Delft

Delft is the centre of production for the famous Dutch blue on white Royal Delft Pottery. It is beautiful small town. Canals, bridges and bicycles…just like Amsterdam but on a much smaller scale. It has a slower feel to it too. Only 1 hour from Amsterdam by train, it is a nice place to spend a relaxing afternoon.

Delft City Hall is a massive building. See all the little bikes at the bottom for scale.
A pretty scene on the cobblestone sidewalk.
Delft has it’s own system of bridges and canals similar to Amsterdam but smaller and less busy.
Handsome buildings. I am now kicking myself for not buying some small piece of pottery while I was here. Next time!

Goodbye Netherlands… hope to see you again someday.

To see the previous post in this series CLICK HERE.

To see the next post in this series CLICK HERE.

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Amsterdam

On August 21, 2026 2 Comments - Photography, Travel

***please try to look at these photos on a bigger screen. Your phone will crush all the details***

This is the first post in a five part series. There is a link at the bottom to continue on to the next posts in chronological order.

Bicycle Kingdom

The first thing you learn as a tourist in Amsterdam is to watch out for bicycles. Bicycles have first right of way followed by public transportation then pedestrians and lastly, cars. There is long-established bike infrastructure here with separate bike roads running along every street, bridge and park. There are bikes everywhere. Everyone rides. And FAST! So, if you walk across a bike road without having a good look both ways, you might cause an accident. In the two days I have been here, I have seen near accidents a few times already. Usually it is a pedestrian unknowingly drifting into a bike lane, getting yelled at if they are lucky or run over if not. With locals, it is understood that bikes go first and they seem to have a second sense about how to get around through all the pedal traffic.

Canals and Bridges

Amsterdam has around 165 canals with a total length of around 75km. And, there are over 1500 bridges crossing the canal systems.

Typical tall, narrow house. Canals, bikes and bridges.
Houseboats along the banks of a canal. Many are permanent homes with electricity and sewage lines direct to shore.
Bikes, boats, bridges…
All the bridges have names. This is”Staalmeesterbrug”.
Storm clouds building over the river.

Central Amsterdam Buildings

Although all of the buildings have unique details and no two look exactly alike, they all share a few similarities. Most are narrow and tall with big windows and steep staircases. There are no skyscrapers here. The tallest of the houses is probably four stories plus a small attic.

Shutters are used to keep the weather out and, in the past, to keep goods safe. Most of these old buildings were once warehouses for goods (like spices) during the golden years of the Dutch East India Company. Because of flooding, the expensive product was kept on the top floors while the bottom floors were for offices and storefronts. A local we met told us that, at one time, pepper was worth more than gold and that the Dutch still have a saying “pepper expensive” for anything that commands a very high price.
Central Amsterdam is now a Unesco Heritage Site. The buildings cannot be altered in any way unless approved and absolutely necessary. Also, it is law that they must be kept in good condition. Most of the houses are beautifully maintained with pretty details and tiny gardens wherever there is space.
Some of the houses across this canal are crooked. You can see this in a few spots where they were originally built on swampy land and are now starting to lean over.
More crooked houses in the distance. There are tour boats running all day long along the canal system. We took one and it was a lot of fun. I learned so much about the city. The boat captain’s name was Frodo..no kidding.
People also have private boats docked all along the edges of every canal.
Big windows and beautiful details.
Typical street view. All the houses are different but also very much the same. At the top of every house, there is a protruding beam with a hook on it. Because the staircases are so steep and narrow it is next to impossible to move large items by that route. Instead, the Dutch devised a pulley system where things are hoisted up using the hook and brought in and out through the huge windows. This was used in the past to move goods in and out of the warehouses and today, people who are moving in to apartments use the same system to get furniture to the upper floors.

Old and New

With it’s narrow streets and bridges, tight corners and swarms of bicycles, there is no room for large cars. Instead there are lots of interesting tiny vehicles (many electric) that you do not typically see in North America.

This is a tiny electric Fiat. It is so small that you can park it sideways instead of parallel to the curb. It is so symmetrical that it is hard to tell the front from the back from a distance.
VW Bug….a tiny car from last century.

Travelling Partners:

I am lucky to be travelling around the city with my good friend and his parents (who have no issues with walking non-stop 20km/day) …as long as there is a coffee and snack break here and there : )

Tour Guide
Family meeting.
Snack break. This is the best thing I have eaten here: Netherlands style cured herring. It is not pickled like the more common herring you may have eaten. This herring is raw but…not exactly: it has the texture of a nice fatty sashimi fish.

I asked one of the fish merchants how it is made. The herring season lasts for only a month in late spring/early summer. The fish are gutted and put whole into buckets of salt water and then frozen to -40 Celsius. Before serving, they are thawed extremely slowly and then hand filleted one at a time. Here they are served with raw onion and pickle. It is a unique and delicious fish preparation. I would recommend it to anyone visiting here.

Rain, Sun, Rain

The weather here changes fast. It can be roasting and sunny for 10 minutes and then it clouds over and pours rain for 10 minutes and then back to blue skies just as fast.

This might be my favourite picture of this set. Milosz’s mom is looking up at a building from across the street while Milosz is inside buying stroopwafels with his dad. We ate them fresh and hot while standing under an awning in the pouring rain.
Rainy Amsterdam.

Our Apartment

Some nice Polish tourists walking alongside the building where we are staying. These buildings, although more modern, still have steep narrow staircases and lots of huge windows. There is never any shortage of sunshine or fresh air inside the apartments.
The house we are staying in has big bright windows on all sides. The apartment has so many nice details but, for some reason, I like this stairway the best. Like all other Amsterdam houses, this one is tall and narrow. You have to climb a total of 57 steps to get from the entrance to the bedrooms on the top floor!
Egyptian Geese beside the canal near our apartment. Not a European native, this bird was commonly depicted in ancient Egyptian art. It was first introduced to the Netherlands in 1967 and you can see them around all the canals and rivers of Amsterdam.

Public Transportation

Subways, trains, trams and busses run between every point you can imagine. Amsterdam is a very easy city to explore on foot or by train.

Subway headed to Centraal Station. Trains are quiet and clean.
There are a few trains that get tagged and they look pretty cool with some extra splashes of colour.

First Impressions of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a highly functional city. There are people EVERYWHERE : pedestrians, cyclists and drivers but, even though there are almost no traffic lights, it all seems to work. The Dutch like to hustle along and they are good at it. Cyclists, pedestrians, cars, and trams all weave in and around each other through intersections at top speed and the natives understand and respect the system. As a visitor, it is all a little dizzying but also awesome to watch during the rush hour.

Even though it is so busy, it is relatively quiet compared to other big cities I have visited. There are very few private cars in the city centre with bicycles outnumbering cars by a huge margin. The air is noticeably fresh and clean. Many cars are electric and the government has mandated that all boats using the canal system must have electric engines within the next 2 years. Blasting music out of your store or boat is against the law. Police boats on the canal make sure that everyone complies with the rules and noise levels stay in check.

The overall effect is that central Amsterdam is a city where people can enjoy being outdoors together with almost zero noise or air pollution. I can spend hours walking through crowds on busy streets in the centre of the city and still come home feeling relaxed and refreshed.

Cyclists riding along the canal wall in the afternoon sun. This is a city built around people (and bicycles) instead of cars and you can definitely feel the difference.

More Amsterdam to come….

To see the next post in this series CLICK HERE.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please leave them below. I always look forward to hearing from you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.

Excerpts from the Circular File #1

On August 15, 2026 0 Comments - Uncategorized, writing

The Circular File Cabinet

As a teenager, I had a job in a photography shop. Sometimes when we were organizing the office, I would come across piles of old invoices or memos. When I asked my manager how to deal with them, he would often say to put them in the “circular file” which meant the garbage can. At the time, I thought that was really funny and I still think of it when I am chucking paper in the trash. What you are about to read below is rescued from the “circular file” on my computer.

A Writing Exercise

My parents had several Czechoslovak friends who immigrated here with them and ended up driving taxi cabs. Even my dad drove a cab for a while. When I was little, I overheard quite a few stories about the passengers they picked up (only the most wholesome ones of course..I can’t imagine the stories my parents heard after i went to bed!).

Some time ago, I was in the middle of writing a long story in which a main character immigrates to Canada from the former Czechoslovakia and becomes a taxi driver in Toronto. At the time, I thought it would be useful to write a few little vignettes about possible passengers, just to get my mind into the space of the taxi cab. I tried to imagine a collection of different people my main character Jaro might pick up and how, in a short space of time, they could change the way he sees the world in some small way.

I ended up with a handful of them which I will post up on here from time to time. They are not really a part of the bigger work, just fun exercises. None of them are the real stories that I heard as a little kid. All these characters and events are fictional and any resemblance to real people and events is coincidental (as they say).

Jaro is the taxi drivers name in my story. In Czech, “j” makes a “y” sound. So, to pronounce it correctly in English, you would say Yaro. This is a very common male Slavic name.

Jaro’s Taxi Fares: The Translator

Jaro picks her up in front of the Fairfield Hotel on Bloor Street West. She pulls open the door, tosses her bag inside and jumps into the back.

“Hi” she says in a big voice, her round eyes beaming at Jaro in the rear view mirror. “Going to the airport, no rush so please drive easy. I don’t have a good stomach for fast car rides” Jaro obliges, trying to be gentle with the accelerator as they pull out into traffic.

“I don’t spend a lot of time in cars back home you see?”

Jaro asks about her home country and finds out that she is Sorosian. Jaro thinks for a minute and replies that he is not too familiar with Soros.

“Not surprised” she answers. He asks her if she knows Czechoslovakia.

“Sure thing…thrown together from parts of the the Hapsburg Empire after the first world war, occupied by commies after 1968, Velvet Revolution in 1989, Velvet divorce in the early 90s… Now the porn capital of Eastern Europe! Velvet PUSSY! HAHAHA!“ Jaro is slightly offended but also impressed. He laughs. She isn’t wrong.

She explains that she is here for a consultation on a James Welter novel she is in the middle of translating.

“To be honest, I didn’t need a consultation. I just made that up to get a free ride here. I have always wanted to visit Canada” she admitted. “I just write whatever I want anyways! HAHAHA!” she laughed maniacally.

“What do you mean?” Jaro asked.

“Well, the government of Soros is paying for translations of English novels into Soro to promote the language and keep it alive. Part of an Indigenous Language and Culture Preservation Program. There are about twenty-four thousand Sorosians left and less than half can speak the language…just the parents and grandparents mostly. The kids just want to speak English and watch Korean dramas.” Jaro nods in the front seat.

“Welter’s bullshit mystery novels seem to be popular everywhere so that’s why I got this assignment. The Sorosian government wants to translate these kinds of easy readers and then promote them in local bookstores and libraries. They hope that the kids might pick them up and read them in their native language”. Jaro keeps quiet as he takes a gentle right turn.

“But I’ll tell you that there isn’t one Sorosian interested in a Canadian mystery novel set in a quiet prairie town. Myself included. So when I get bored I just make up whatever I want. No one will EVER notice.”

“You really do this?” Jaro asks. 

“Sure! Like when Detective McCall is staking out the town library waiting for the Deauville Gang to break in and steal the Group of Seven painting?…I got so bored…I made McCall stake out a highway strip club instead. He gets bored and goes into the club, gets drunk on Seagrams 7, gets a lap dance and a HAND JOB! HAHAHA!” Jaro flushes a little at the language coming from this small well dressed academic.

“Welter can’t read it and no Sorosian will read that shit either!’ And certainly no one will read it in both languages and compare. So I am free to entertain myself while I get paid! HAHAHA”. Jaro chuckles.

“Anyways, I probably improved the book and I really just came here to see the snow. It doesn’t snow in Soros but I LOVE snow. There is nothing more beautiful to me. That’s why I came in winter. I spent the last couple of days near Collingwood. Lots of snow. Do you like winter?” Jaro was always surprised to find another winter lover, especially from a warm country. He replied that winter was his favourite season apart from the city driving and that he especially liked the sound snow made under his boots.

“I have travelled all over the place looking for snow and the best is Japan. The snowiest country in the world is Japan” said the translator.

“Japan” Jaro repeats as he eases on the brakes.

“Yes! Isn’t it surprising? For every centimeter of snow you get here, they get a meter. There are towering walls of snow along the roadways”. Jaro imagines an earthquake and what would happen to those snow walls on the highway…always imagining things from behind the steering wheel.

“If you really love winter, go to Hokkaido in January. I could die happy there”. Jaro replies that he is not sure if he will ever get to Japan.

“If you love winter, if you love snow, you should try to go…I went to translate a volume of Soseki Haiku and never wanted to leave. Do you know Haiku? Short poems, 17 syllables, nature? Absolute murder to translate into Soro but I did my best. They are just gorgeous, no embellishment needed. Definitely no handjob Haiku!! HAHAHA!” Jaro chuckled again and shifted in his seat a little.

“I love poetry the most. Novels are just so much noise and repetitive storytelling sometimes. All ego. Not poetry and definitely not Haiku.”

She pulled a small notebook out of her bag and opened it on her lap. She was silent for the rest of the ride. Jaro liked her sense of humour and her crazy laugh. He drove quietly hoping she would pipe up again but she seemed to be absorbed in her notes. When they arrived at Terminal 3, he pulled to the curb and walked around the car to let her out. She snatched up her bag and bounced out of the back seat.

“It was a pleasure meeting you Velvet snow man…I hope you take my advice”. Jaro laughed and said he would think about it. Just before she turned to go, she handed him a neatly folded page from her notebook.

“5-7-5” she said. Then she skipped off into the terminal building. Jaro got back in the cab, unfolded the paper and read:

If I disappear

Come find me here in winter

Snow white Hokkaido

He counted the syllables on his fingers as he read it two more times. 5-7-5. It was beautiful. He would think about it. He tucked the paper under the elastic band on his sun visor and drove away.