Amsterdam Noord.

Oh the skies here! The skies!

For the second time since I live in The Netherlands, there's a river between my home and the city. De Ij. I have to get a boat every time I leave the house (unless I stay in the North), but it's a nice little ride, with beautiful views and you get to see the amazing colours of the water changing with the sky.

A little wiki-info:

In historic times, the IJ was a long and narrow brackish bay that connected to the Zuiderzee (itself a bay of the North Sea) and stretched from Amsterdam in the east to Velsen in the west. At its west end, only the natural dune ridge across the Dutch North Sea coast prevented the IJ, which grew ever larger through the centuries, from directly connecting to the North Sea and so making the North Holland peninsula nearly an island. By the seventeenth century, however, access to the IJ became difficult due to sand bars across its mouth, and ships becoming bigger, and it was nearly impossible for seafaring vessels to reach the city. At the same time, the bay gnawed away at the surrounding farmlands, almost connecting with the Haarlemmermeer (Lake Haarlem) and seriously threatening the cities of Haarlem and Amsterdam.

Plans were put forth to reclaim both the Haarlemmermeer and the IJ and turn them into polders. The Haarlemmermeer was first, falling dry in 1852, and the largest part of the IJ followed suit between 1865 and 1876, with only a small lake remaining at Amsterdam that was closed off from the Zuiderzee by the Oranje locks. At the same time, the North Sea Canal was constructed in the former IJ basin to provide Amsterdam with access to the sea again and revive its ailing port. It cut through the isthmus to connect to the North Sea near the town of Velsen; a new port, IJmuiden ("Y-mouth") was built at its west end. The east end of the IJ polders near Amsterdam was given over to industry, and a large new seaport area was constructed.