All About Frozen Canals

Part of winter in the Netherlands involves the canals freezing.  Many times, they freeze hard enough so that people can skate on top.  It's a great mode of travel if all the canals are frozen, since sometimes it seems they are more numerous than roads.  (Ok, not really, but close).  This year, the larger canals didn't all freeze, but many of the smaller canals did, along with the ponds.  As soon as the ice was thick enough, hundreds of Dutch people were found outside, skating on the ponds and canals.  Even the littlest of kids were out there, running around on the ice, pushing a wooden chair in front of them for balance.  

This winter, the southern part of the country has been colder and has had more snow.  On a short trip to  Amsterdam, I was able to see many of the frozen canals.

The locks in the canal are surrounded by a nice sheet of ice.  

The canals frozen and covered in snow.  All of the houseboats were frozen in place.

Some birds stand on the frozen canal.

Not all of the canal was frozen solid.  This part regularly had boats pass by, and they broke the ice up into little mini-icebergs.

Every winter, certain Dutch people get more and more excited the colder it gets.  Their hope is that it will get cold enough to hold the Elfstedentocht - a 200 km ice skating circuit that goes over several of the canals in the country.  Of course, you need a pretty cold winter to freeze 200 km of canals - but it has happened several times.   This year it wasn't nearly cold enough for this to happen. (I still thought it was plenty cold, thank you.)  Of course, spending anywhere from 6-13 hours skating on 200 km of canals is hard on the body, and people at the end of the race typically look like this.

This event was made into a competition in 1909, but people were skating far before this on the canals on a similar circuit   In what year, before 1909, was a poem written that mentioned skating on the canals of Friesland?

Dynamics 101

When I was in Colorado, I came up with the laws of Winter Bus Dynamics:

1.) When waiting for the bus, the time you wait is inversely proportional to the temperature.
2.) The number of buses that fail to show up will correlate directly with the amount of snow on the ground.

Now that I am living in Groningen, I have drafted my complimentary rules of Winter Bike Dynamics:

1.) A bike in motion will tend to remain in motion, especially when on a thin layer of ice.
2.) For temperatures below 35 degrees F, the speed one goes on a bike increases exponentially with decreasing temperature times 2 (where the 2 results from two processes - one to keep warm, and one from the biker's desire to drink hot chocolate/tea/coffee on arrival).
3.) Wind direction is always opposing direction the biker wants to travel.  However, this does not immediately imply that wind direction is opposing the way the bike actually travels.
4.) If temp < temp critical, brake line freezes.  Unable to stop, crash in to hard object.  Put both legs in casts.  Enact laws of Winter Bus Dynamics.
  

And Now, A Word from Our Pope

Our hotel was very close to the Vatican.  One neat thing about staying so close to the Vatican - every day, you can pass back and forth multiple times from one country to another!  Yes, the Vatican is the smallest country I've been to - the smallest country in the world!

This was the view from our hotel:

Sunset over St. Peter's Square.

In a giant oval around the square, statues of the saints and of Jesus himself look down on the crowds.

The entrance of St. Peter's Basilica.

On the morning of Epiphany, thousands of people crowd into St. Peter's Square. 

Exiting the church after Mass.

Since it was also a Sunday, the Pope appeared to give his Angelus to the thousands gathered in St. Peter's square.

In light of the recent news - this event is even more special now.

The Pope addressed the crowd, speaking at least 6 languages.

To give you an idea of where the Pope was - here you can see the window (top, second from the right) with the red banner hanging from it.  Pretty far away (so I was happy my camera can ZOOM!)

Giving his final blessing.

The Vatican (at least on this side) is surrounded by a huge fortification.

The next stop was the Vatican Museum, a huge collection of art assembled over the centuries.

One of the Egyptian rooms, set up to look like an ancient temple.

A rare (in least in my experience) statue.

Also an Egyptian statue, a little more realistic.

An ancient envelope, made of clay.  Pretty neat!

In the random statue room - the moral of this room - the Vatican has a lot of random statues.

This arch is so neat!  Escher would have loved it!  It actually is three dimensional - almost like a mobius arch.

Missing a bow.

Bram, with the random statue room behind him.

I need this statue in my office - the muse of astronomy.

There is even some (weird) modern art on the grounds of the Vatican.  A point if you can tell me what the heck it is.

Exploring some more, we come across this Greek vase where a man tries to jam a boar into a pot that already contains another man.

A tapestry of the ascension.

The famous map room - decked out with a beautiful ceiling.

The map room had maps from all around Italy.  Another point if you can guess what this is a map of!  And as always, you can only make a guess at one of the questions at a time.

And a map of Sicily!

The very famous staircase in the Vatican museum - art in its own right.

Sunset over the Vatican.

Then we head onwards to visit the Sistine chapel.  It is amazing.  Literally amazing.  You can really see the talent of Michelangelo.  Unfortunately, we could not take pictures there, but if you ever have a chance to go to Rome, please go there and stand in wonder at the paintings.

Next up was St. Peter's Basilica.

Welcome!

An arch on the way to the Basilica.

Inside, one of the most famous statues of all time - Michelangelo's Pieta.

But that wasn't the only amazing statue.  St. Peter's is filled with amazing art.  Note the woman in this picture for scale.

The incredible art behind the altar.  These marble statues are maybe twice as big as lifesize.  Amazing.

Looking across the huge expanse of St. Peter's.  The large monument on the left is the monument to St. Peter - and St. Peter is buried underneath.

Another famous statue - St. Peter - his foot rubbed smooth by thousands of pilgrims touching it.

St. Peter's, to the tune of a visiting American choir.

With that, our trip to Rome draws to a close.  I know it's late, but I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy Epiphany!

Not to be Confused with the Parthenon or Panthéon

* from Wikipedia.

The Pantheon is one of many Pa*the*on buildings across Europe.  The Pantheon in Rome is filled with all sorts of good geometry.  The ceiling is a beautiful dome with an oculus on the top, which causes an interesting situation if it's snowing or raining.  

A point if you can guess the volume of this dome!*

The dome is a perfect dome, and is perfectly positioned so that if you had a giant sphere, you could fit it exactly within the building (not that you'd want to - no, actually, I think that would be cool.)

Located in the Pantheon is also the grave of Raphael.

A side chapel.

Even the pews, to keep with the geometry of the building, are circular!

* Just the top of the dome portion, not the entire building.