Let’s start back here, where it’s still kind of peaceful and nice.
Can you see it?
No, not the cute family hanging out at the park. (I hope you can see them. They’re right there after all.) And not the Rijksmuseum either. (The gigantic building is pretty obvious, even from here.) What we’re really focused on is the little blobs of red and white below the museum.
Stop squinting. I’ll zoom in for you.
There we go. The “I amsterdam” letters! You can actually read them from here.
But they’re still partially hidden by clumps of people, so let’s zoom in a bit more.
Oh wait, they are always partially hidden by clumps of people. Unless it’s raining, or the middle of the night. (And even then, there’s still no guarantee of a clear shot, because people are really feisty about getting their pictures with famous things.)
The “I amsterdam” letters were a part of a larger city campaign to showcase and celebrate Amsterdam as a city of diversity, creativity, innovation, and business.
And now, they’re one of the most photographed and iconic features of the city.
In fact, it’s estimated that 8,000 photographs are taken of the letters every single day.
(Wait. Can we all just take a moment to look at the guy with the selfie stick… What can you even see in that picture?? Your faces and a tiny portion of the “a”? Yes, I’m judging you. For multiple reasons.)
We didn’t get a great picture either – partially because I’m not willing to be a rabid photo scavenger, shoving other people out of my way, and partially because there just isn’t a great picture to be taken here. (Unless it’s raining or the middle of the night, maybe.)
So we are *kind of* Amsterdam. I still think it counts. (And for the record, we are certainly more Amsterdam than the guy with the selfie stick. He’s only a partial “a.”)
Trying to get a picture of us with all 10 letters seemed like a pain, but we decided that single letters were totally do-able.
M is for Michael. (And is a much more manageable picture.)
Jungle gym climbing: complete ✓
And backwards D is for Bri. Because I wanted a picture with the first letter of my name too.
Being inside of a letter: complete ✓
Soooo yeah. Maybe we are only kind of Amsterdam. But we are totally the letters “m” and (backwards-d) “b”.
And more importantly, we still got the fun of climbing all over the letters, but only spent like 2 minutes taking pictures, instead of 30 minutes and a kajillion terrible pictures that I would inevitably delete anyway.
And in my book, that makes us winners.
(Plus, we used that time to take truly magnificent pictures at the Rijksmuseum.)
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