The Glorious Flowers of the Netherlands!

To finish my series of The Netherlands I will tell you about the spectacular show that I experienced on the spring blossom. Narcises, hyacinths and the queen of them: The Tulips.

Leaving Amsterdam to come back to Paris a wonderful stop close to the Keukenhof Park (30 km from Amsterdam) put myself and my friends in a such abundance glorious of colours and fragrances, fabulous long bed of flowers with beautiful canals around.

The Netherlands are the country that most grow and import flowers in the world. The first tulip was planted in Duch solo in 1593  and since then they invented a whole horticultural industry turning their lowland into a blanket of blooms.

It’s one of the worth things to do in this, again, so organic country.

The best time to enjoy the flowers in The Netherlands is between April and September. Nothing more refreshing  and inspiring than walking around this amazing paradise and see nature in all its glory.

I AMsterdam!

Graffitis in Amsterdam Noord.

Continuing my series of articles about Amsterdam, I will show some graffiti’s that I saw in Amsterdam Noord. Invited by the product designer Lex Poot, who has a studio there ( I will talk about him in my next post) we left downtown Amsterdam and took for free, btw a boat to NDSM Werf.

The NDSM is an old shipyard on the shore of IJ North of Amsterdam, that was closed down in 1984 when the ship industry started to move out of Holland. Now the place is the center of subculture in Amsterdam.

The patio measures 84.000m2, the equivalent of 10 football fields.  It hosts the NDSM barn, with the area of 20.000m2 and 20 meters high, where 250 artists work with visual arts, design, theatre, cinema, media and architecture

The pear NDSM is the home of several artistic disciplines and crafts, it’s a refuge for artists and individual crafts, for known and less know artists, independent organizations that work together and inspire each other expecting that new initiatives arise.

With a lot of space for creative minds, of course that there’s a lot of graffitti, bringing colors, contrast and inspiring messages for this incredible place.

I Amsterdam!

All pictures by Maria Fernanda

I Amsterdam!

Lest weekend I spent a great time in Amsterdam. Now inspired by the flowers (specially by the tulips), the amazing infrastructure to bike, coffee shops, creative people and a lot of street art, I will start a series of articles about the forbidden city.

Maybe you can think that I am exaggerating to say that a city can be a paradise, but if you really like to bike, if you really concern about living in a very conscious way being responsible for the whole universe, where people think about sharing their knowledge instead of selling it. If you like this idea, The Netherlands can be a paradise for you.

This was my second time in Amsterdam but something in my feelings has not change since I went there in 2008. Amsterdam is a calm, peaceful and bucolic place.

In this first post, I will present some graffiti’s that I saw downtown while biking. I rent a bike for a very convenient price (22 euros for 2 days) and I could feel how the Dutch live and enjoy the amazing view around the canals.

Actually The Netherlands has the most high proportional number of people cycling in the world . They do everything by bike. Go to work, shop, go to school etc. It’s such a feeling of freedom when you can bike without fear that a car can hit you. Therefore if you know that the laws are always on the bikers side, riding in Amsterdam makes  you feel awake, protected and inoffensive for the whole environment.

Bike + street art = I Amsterdam!

All pictures by Maria Fernanda

(Watch the video on the end of this article, to understand better about cycling culture in The Netherlands).