European River Cruise

We are in Amsterdam and it is our first night on the boat (Viking River Cruise). We are in bed and asleep by 10 pm. It has been a long day of travel and we are exhausted. The boat is to disembark at 11 pm. Around 11:30 I wake up. No movement detected and I conclude the sailing time must have been delayed. Opening the curtain I am amazed that the world is silently passing by our window. There is not a hint of movement on the boat, just smooth, soft, quiet sailing. We are gliding through the Netherlands with windmills as our morning destination.

Jan and I are both awake well before sunrise, coffees in hand, camera around my neck. We have a deck off our room so we can hang out there and watch the morning come alive. Here is one of the morning scenes on the river. This image was taken well before sunrise.

Each morning, a little before sunrise, the mist would begin to form on the river, making for some very nice photo opportunities. Those passengers who sleep in have no idea of the beauty they are missing as these scenes only last a few minutes at most. Here is an image the sunshine began to cast its splendor on a misty Rhine.

This is our first day on the river and we are on our way to see the windmills in the Netherlands. It was our first day of seeing the countryside and churches. It all looked so clean and pristine. I do not recall seeing one piece of trash in the Rhine the whole time we were sailing on it. Here is a typical view:

And then finally, about mid morning we reach the area where we get to explore the windmills.

I normally take pictures with my Canon 5D Mk III camera. But for this trip, because we were going to be walking a lot, I brought along my much lighter Sony NEX 6. Considering these images (except for the windmills) were taken from a moving platform I thought the Sony did a decent job.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy my post about The East Side of the Sierras

Art Display At The Center For Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa

The Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa, has a wonderful program that encourages artist members to display their work. The work is hung in the Social Hall and typically has about twenty pieces hanging for two months at a time. On March 1rst I will be hanging several images taken in Iceland, along with some wildlife images, including foxes, coyotes, eagles and kites. I will also have some paintings by my mother and two of my own. I am pretty excited about this showing. One of the pictures I will have in the show is of Godafoss, a beautiful waterfall in Iceland. When I first saw pictures of this waterfall I knew I wanted to go to Iceland to take pictures of it. This composition required gettin into some very cold water.

Subscribe to my blog by Email

Get new posts by email: Enter your email address in the box and click subscribe to be notified when a new post is published. Subscribe Powered by

The Aurora Borealis, May 10, 2024

This last May, my wife, Jan, and I were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, WA. We were there for a week staying at the Trumpeter Inn, a B&B on San Juan Island. Mid way through our stay we heard there was to be a Northern Lights display and that we would likely be able to see it since we were at a latitude just north of Victoria, BC. The excitement was immediate. The conditions were just right as the sky was cloudless and the moon was in its crescent phase and would be low on the horizon (and therefore not overly bright) during the expected good viewing time between 10 pm and 2 am. The image above was taken that night and is what I was expecting to see, a green Aurora. Little did we know what was to come! Early on the was the first hint that something special was about to happen as color in addition to green began to show. I found this very exciting as I had seen green auroras before but never one with the purple/blue colors an...

Notes To My Mother

Search This Blog