Green protection

I had many walks in the parks during the last few days and found some calmness, protection and energy from the trees and the new growth of flowers and other living things. I have something I have to process in my mind at the moment and walking outside gives always some new directions to my thoughts. I found it at the moment very inspiring to see the landscape and the small, natural details in the grass level and up in the trees. I will introduce here the collection of these moments and some of them I found like paintings. Maybe the lack of my technical concentration sometimes produces something more poetic than if I would try too hard to be a good cameraman :-). We start with the green and end this meeting with some picture poetry.

Rembrandtpark

Vondelpark

Camera paintings

Wishing you a lovely week!

Festival feeling in Rembrandtpark

This morning was very foggy in Amsterdam. I was admiring how four swans were swimming quietly on the water in almost white looking landscape. While drinking my coffee, I was also hoping that the sky will get clearer and I can walk to Rembrandtpark in the west side of town. I had read from the newspaper that there was going to be the 10th Rembrandtpark Festival outdoors with performances, flea market, food, drinks and activities for the children. This happening is organised every autumn. Nice way to spent time on sunday with my two kids.

You can easily get to this park from the centre just taking the tram   number 1 or 17 to Surinameplein. From there is only few hundred meter walk to this green area. It is much more peaceful park than for example Vondelpark which is also close by.

There was a nice village atmosphere at the festival. A lot of local people and small businesses presenting their products. The festival area was between building playground "Het Landje" and "kinderboederij". This green area beside a little water element on the middle has been lately improved by the town. There are also some future plans to make this part of park more inviting for the visitors.

This wild west- lookalike view under is from the building playground "het Landje". Here the children can be architects and build their own houses. This is a great spot to spend time with kids. There is also many other activities like horse back riding with ponys, table tennis and little boats by the water. It is like a creative centre without all news technologies. Back to basics!

Every festival has of course also the usual entertainment for little  ones. Like this plastic shark with a slide.

The highlight of the day for me was our visit to the restaurant "17th floor" at Ramada Hotel, which is located just beside the festival area near the motorway A10 in Rembrandtpark. Here you have the most amazing view: you can see very far away in every direction. You can admire the silhouette of whole Amsterdam. There is not so many high spots in Holland as we know, so this is like being on top of the mountain in a local scale. In the wintertime you can even ice skate here on the roof terrace. I will make a report about it later this year! 

The building itself is quite depressing from the outside, but the roof terrace and the restaurant upstairs is nice and cosy. The food is supposed to be good too.

We had a good time together. Kids were creative and there was so many things to eat at the festival. I had to say "NO" for my children after a hot dog, pancake, popcorn and soda.