OK, apparently I have to correct something I said yesterday. (II won’t trawl for typos just yet, though.) It’s true the building we’re in has hireable offices as well as 3 or four bedrooms. However, the building is scheduled to be demolished. I don’t see a need to do so. While it’s not a hotel in the sense of Ibis, Holiday Inn or other chains, it seems to be in perfectly good condition. (Possibly points off fro not having a lift.) So we assume the land-owners want to. build something taller. Meanwhile, it’s friendly, has an outside bar with a food-truck, as well as every popular indoors bar. So I hope execution is stayed.
Oh dearie dearie me: I’m beginning to understand why Deutsche Bahn’s reputation is going downhill. I love all the marshalling yards outside even relatively small stations, the bookshops that sell real books, the decent coffee, the various accents along the way. But a 6 1/2 hour journey that got delayed and delayed even more as we travelled: no thanks. Were we caught behind a local chugaboom? Or were we the local chugaboom holding up everyone else? Even cyclometer caught the bug, not mapping at all where we were despite restarting the phone:
On one of our previous visits to Noord Holland, we went to Marken, a small island in the IJsselmeer. So we decided to go and see what has changed and how much we could remember. (It doesn’t help that I’m envisaging Reichenau in the Bodensee as I type this.) Cyclemeter captured our bus journeys there and back again, walking around the island, and then my evening peregrinations back in Zaandam.
And while France votes, and the UK starts to get used to a change of government, we are away from it. The first part of round and round is learning how to switch off again.
My sister has a friend who lives in northwest London and had a significant birthday on Saturday 6 April. My sister can’t travel that far on on her own, so I went south to take her to the birthday party. Our travel should have been
Our first visit was to the Stadsarchief (city archives). It’s very worth visiting, not least because it appears to be on ‘Weasel Street’. (Here’s the tram-journey.). Then we took another tram as far east as we could get (IJburg) and watched boat-traffic along the IJ. Then Elly took me to a wonderful place. (here’s how we got there and back.)
Amsterdam was filled with LGBT+ flags. Gemeentearchief buildingThe building is a former bank HQ.Maria Austria institute?pink elephantarchitecturemore architecturealong the IJIJ-IJ sailorwhere we wereground-level diversitypropagandamore propagandaYou must do this!my spiritual home, says Elly
tram terminusThere’s a familiar name.Where it isuntranslatableopen-air gymShe blows!I wonder what they sell here?We went in for a drink, and they place was lovely.Elephants are everywhere.Yes!ready to leave – and ready to go back.Why is this boat taking in water?land’s endwhere we wereaquatics
Berlin baby! Here’s how we got here. First, a train from Zaandam to Amsterdam Centraal; next, a train from Amsterdam Centraal to Berlin Haupbahnhof. (I have no idea why Cyclometer stopped recording before we even got to Hanover.) We arrived in the late evening, so don’t do any more than install ourselves in a hotel, then go back to the Haupbahnhof to eat at Hans im Glück. (Eating at Hans im Glück is one of the Deutsche Heilige Dreifaltigkeit: the others are shopping at a DM and doing laundry at an Eco-Express Waschsalon.)
Here’s all the cyclemeter maps from our recent holiday. A few of them show ferry and train journeys – I’m obsessive like that! Over the next few days I’ll upload the rest of my photos to ‘Bruce and Elly get passed by Dutchies on the left-hand side …‘
Digital evidence that Bruce might have a life 