July 20: Amsterdam evening
More from around the city in the afternoon and evening. It's worth noting that while I was working on the immediately foregoing Amsterdam pages, King Willem Alexander acceded to the throne upon the abdication of his mother Queen Beatrix. Topical!
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The Centraal Station has a clocklike wind direction indicator. I don't know whether it's mechanically connected to a weathervane or what, but it's pretty neat.
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We took a tram ride out to the borough of Nieuw-West on the western periphery for a lecture on the history of Amsterdam's development. Watch your fingers!
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Along Jan Tooropstraat, a large portico at Sint Lucas Andreas Ziekenhuis (Hospital) with an isometric view of the hospital campus.
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Some of the geese were waiting for the tram to ride to the center of town; others loitered in indecision across the way; the pigeons, frustrated, tipped over a bicycle. (This is near the intersection of Jan Tooropstraat and Jan Evertsenstraat.)
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The building where we saw the lecture, the Vliegbasis de Huygens, is along Jan Evertsenstraat. This other building with a series of cool curved monitors for a roof is immediately adjacent to or part of it.
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The friendly 13 tram arriving to take us back to the center after the lecture.
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Back in the center: Magna Plaza, just behind the Royal Palace on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, a fin-de-siècle post office converted into a shopping mall.
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The old Telegraafgebouw further down Nieuwezijds Voorburgswal is, I think, in the Amsterdam School style, but its tower has a rather Nordic look.
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These mysterious perforated pavers must be some secret code. That's the simplest explanation.
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At the corner of Kalverstraat, a pedestrian shopping street, and the tiny Enge Kapelsteeg, is this curious concave wall hosting an even curiouser bay window.
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Further along on Kalverstraat, a rather fetching façade that seems stylistically somewhere between the Amsterdam School, Art Deco, and minimalized classicism.
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And then a very curious façade indeed, a rather Mondrianesque composition. I'm not sure where this is, maybe still on Kalverstraat.
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Out on the Muntplein stands the storied Munttoren.
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I went out on a walk after dinner and the twilight on the canals became magical as it deepened. Here, the early-16th-century Oost-Indisch Huis along the Kloveniersburgwal. (Burgwal means rampart, so this was one of the edges of the medieval city.)
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A few doors further down, a pleasingly solid stone façade.
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A charming twilight scene along the Raamgracht at its joint with the Kloveniersburgwal.
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YO DAWG I HERD U LIKE WINDOWS SO WE PUT SOME WINDOWS IN YOUR WINDOWS SO U CAN LOOK AT THE VIEW WHILE U LOOK AT THE VIEW (This is the Radisson across the way, at the corner of the Kloveniersburgwal and Rusland.)
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The Kloveniersburgwal joins at its southern end with the Amstel, past this totally sweet Staalstraat drawbridge and the wedge-shaped NH Doelen, Amsterdam's oldest hotel.
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Across from the Amstel street, at the corner where the Amstel becomes the Rokin, is the similarly #swaggy Hotel de l'Europe.
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A choice bit of last glow over the Rokin.
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Hey what's this cool old tower with the wires and needles? Hint: it's the Munttoren again.
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Just beyond, a fuller view of the Carlton. Its leglike piers rather remind me of Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation.
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One of the really neat view alignments of the city is that at the end of the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat/Spiegelgracht you can see one of the towers of the Rijksmuseum, here viewed from the other end at the Herengracht.
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A ghost rider along the Herengracht in the deepening twilight, looking east toward Vijzelstraat.
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From the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat bridge, dusk approaches over the Keizersgracht and a tram trundles over the canal on the Leidsestraat in the distance.
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Finally back at the Hans Brinker right at isobrightness.