Lions in Zaragoza

 There's a stone bridge in Zaragoza. It's called The Stone Bridge. It's the oldest in the city, dating from 1440, although the Romans built one in the first century. 

The bridge is 225 metres in length and has seven arches, one of which is hidden by the road. In 1991 they put bronze lions at both ends of this river crossing. The lion is an emblem for the city of Zaragoza

This photo shows the structure of the bridge very well.

When I'm in Zaragoza, it's nice to run across and between the city's bridges. In the photo it looks as if it's pedestrian; cars aren't allowed, but buses and taxis cross the river on it. Pedestrians use the sides.

Anyway, what I wanted to share today was the lions in Santa Engracia square. Last week there was a kind of flower festival. The big park had flower stalls and plant-based activities. Just off Independencia, the central shopping street, there were eight lions.

You can see four here

This one was my favourite

More wildflowers

 There's a walk we can do from our house; it takes a couple of hours and you don't need to use the car. You go down the picturesquely named La Favorita; it's not very pretty, although it has a nice flowerbed at the end, cross the main road to France and dive down a track which runs parallel to the road. There are lots of wild roses on the sides. Some way on we get to a concrete bridge crossing the Aragón river. If you turn left there's an easy road walk to the "golf ball" hydroelectric power station which processes the water coming down a big green tube that runs from our destination.

This video shows the power station and the pipe: 

We turned right at the bridge to climb the track taking us to the top of the pipe. It took us an hour and twenty minutes from home to the top of the pipe. The wild flowers on the way were amazing! Mostly blue or while linen flowers, dog roses and pyramid orchids.

Monte Oroel

This pyramid orchid was big!

Wildflowers

The tulips in Amsterdam were wonderful. However, here in Aragón we have some really wonderful wildflowers. On Thursday we went to Formigal, to the ski-lift called Espelunciechas to see the daffodils. It was rather late in the season but we couldn't make it before. Although the weather was fine lower down, in the mountains it was wet; not pouring, but enough to need an umbrella to stop my glasses being unuseable. Never mind. The flowers were amazing! 

Ranunculus pyrenaeus (most likely

Asphodels not open yet

Viola cornuta

Elder flowered orchid (apparently they smell like elderflowers)

All over the place!

euphorbia flavicoma (maybe)

Daffodils (I expect there's a specific name for these)

Squills?

Lovely gentians

Can't get enough daffodils. They were past their best but still lovely

Rijksmuseum, and some knitting

 The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is a great place to visit. We'd been before, but we decided to get tickets anyway. As with all the great national collections like the Prado, the National Gallery, the Louvre, it's worth repeating. 

Housed in a great red-brick 19th century turreted bulding, with what used to be a road running through it, it was teeming with tourists before opening time. Last time we went there, in 2018, we got open tickets; to use whenever we wanted, but now you book a time slot on a specific day. That being said, we just joined the queue and they let us in. Spring is high season in Amsterdam because of the tulips, and there were tourists everywhere. For me, the ones who were a bit of a nuisance were those in groups with tour-guides, standing in a tight group near significant artworks and explaining the importance of ...Rembrandt, Van Gough, Goya or whoever and making it difficult for the lone viewers to see the paintings.

The jewel in the crown is, of course, The Night Watch by Amsterdam's own Rembrandt. At the moment it's under restoration treatment. Every night they wheel it into the workshop and do more to it, then wheel it back into its glass case for the public to see in the morning. If you can get near the glass case! 

People these days take photos of everything. I didn't bother, except for a few things.

Some flowers at the bottom of one of the medieval paintings

An enormous walnut tree

Flowers in a painting

I noticed a few knitting features:

Girl knitting in the dunes, by Bernard Blommers 1845-1914

One of the big 17th century paintings is Company of Captain Cornelis Witsen and Lieutenant Johan Oetgens van Waveren celebrating the Treaty of Münster, 1648. (the Civic Guards Meal)

As it's not by Rembrandt you can see it closer. I was so impressed with the stockings I took photos of them!

Lovely pattern, knitted silk stockings!

Snazzy footwear!

 

Amsterdam

 My prevailing impression of Amsterdam is crazy traffic. Buses, trams, cars, lorries, motorbikes...and bicycles. Crossing the road is an adventure. 

They really are very good at bikes there. Families use them, either with a kind of wheelbarrow attachment for the children, or on the back/crossbar/handlebars. Cross in front of a bike at your peril. They don't usually stop for you, even on a crossing. 

And the way they park on the canalside terrified me!

But I suppose you get used to it!

Tulips in Amsterdam

 I retired last year, and we wanted to do a trip to celebrate. However, what I really wanted to do was to go and see the tulip fields in Holland. Since the season is so short: from late March to mid May, we had to wait almost a year. It was worth it though!

We booked in advance: flights, hotel, tickets for Keukenhof Gardens (transport included) and for good measure, tickets for the Rijksmuseum. 

What we couldn't book was the weather. Amsterdam has its fair share of rain, and the day of the gardens it rained. Not all the time, but we didn't get dazzled by the sun either. The flowers themselves did the dazzling. 

There were a lot of people there; probably thousands. It really is an amazing place!

At the entrance

It's got a windmill and lots of tourists

I could post more photos of tulips.

Tulip fields

These won't show up so well, but surrounding the gardens are the fields; blocks of colour.

They let the tulips bloom then cut the flowers off son the strength goes into the bulb, which multiplies and grows bigger. We saw them from the plane on the way in but too far away to show much on a photo.

The best place to photograph the tulip fields is from the platform of the windmill, but there was a queue to go up when we came off the boat trip so we didn't bother; after 40 minutes on the canal we were a bit chilly and headed off to one of the pavilions to get coffee and Dutch apple pie (delicious)

More and more flowers!

And so on. More and more flowers, more and more tourists taking photos of flowers and/or self with flowers. It reminded me of Stonehenge; conpletely unique, completely overrun with tourists. I'm not complaining about the tourists, they are part of the show really. An amazing experience all round.