One year in the Netherlands: a photo summary
Last Tuesday marks a date of my first anniversary in the Netherlands. I decided to browse my hard drive and find some photos that I can share. I invite you to watch classic frames from the country of Rembrandt: windmills, tulips, canals, but also some less traditional frames.
Amsterdam
It is - I believe - the most popular city of the Netherlands, usually associated with weed, red lanterns district and tons of canals. But there is so much more to see there! For the first month I was lucky enough to live right in the center (next to Opera) and in the following months I spent there quite a lot of time there (Booking.com headquarter is located in Amsterdam).
Haarlem
In November I moved to Haarlem. The most interesting points of the city are st. Bavo's church, Taylers Museum (the oldest museum in the Netherlands) and De Adriaan windmill.
Zaanse Schans
The most popular places in the Netherlands where you can see the windmills are Kinderdijk (near Rotterdam, I have not been there yet) and Zaanse Schans located about 20 minutes by train from Amsterdam.
Tulips and heather
Most of the landscape photographers living in the Netherlands wait mostly for two seasons: April/May when tulips bloom in whole country and the end of summer when big parts of the country are covered by the heather.
The Sea Coast
Living in Haarlem it takes my roughly half an hour to reach the beach by the bicycle. It is quite obvious that the coast became my favourite place very soon.
This is 'Paard van Marken' lighthouse and it has a really interesting history: it used to be located on the island on the sea. First in 1932 Dutch built a dam (Afsluitdijk) that cut the bay off the sea and then years later they connected the island with the rest of the land.
Cycling from Haarlem to the sea across Kennemerland National Park you can be surprised (if you are lucky) meeting highland cattles or even european bisons. I wrote a small note about these animals in the summary of 2016, so let me just show you some pictures.