Vondelpark

We are lucky enough to live very close to Vondelpark, the biggest park in Amsterdam city. As part of capturing some photos of Amsterdam in autumn on the weekend, I took this one in the park.

And to flesh out the story, I thought I would include some history of the park…

In 1864 a group of prominent Amsterdammers formed a committee to found a public park. They raised money to buy 8 hectares of land and the architect L.D. Zocher was commissioned to design the park as an English landscape. They used vistas, ponds and pathways to create an illusion of a natural area. The park was open to public in 1865 as a horseback riding and strolling park named Nieuwe Park. The name Vondelpark was adopted in 1867 when a statue of Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel was situated into the park. The committee soon raised money to enlarge the park and by 1877 it reached its current space of 45 hectares. At that time its location was on the edge of Amsterdam, since then it has become central in the city.

Autumn in Amsterdam

With summer time ending this weekend, winter is moving in on us fast. I headed out today to try and capture a few photos of Amsterdam with it’s seasonal colours. It was not as colourful as I expected, but watch this space – will try again over the coming weeks. The photo above is the canal we live on.

The weather has been rather warmer and drier than usual. This has been especially good news for me, since I have been doing a lot of training in preparation for Ironman Western Australia, which takes place on December 3 this year. Am heading out to Australia in a couple of weeks, but still plenty of miles to do, so fingers crossed that the weather holds.

At least with the end of summer time it will be a bit lighter in the mornings…

Once again the blog has been a bit patchy. Life has been busy, stressful and fun, but hopefully we can get a bit more reliable again.

Shane