Merry Christmas, happy holidays, wherever you are and whatever you celebrate. This year we are in the Netherlands, where it has been a little grey and very chilled. I decided I wanted to do more film photography again, so I don’t have many digital photos to share, but at some unknown point in the future I’ll hopefully have some cool film photos to post.

We’ve started our holiday in Amsterdam, where we have mostly walked around taking photos and seen art – indoors and out.

I can recommend FOAM photography gallery and of course the Rijksmuseum (which was handily open on Christmas Day). But we also discovered that every winter, Amsterdam holds a Light Festival, with free public artworks along its many waterways. This year’s festival is themed “disrupt” and has lots of political statements hidden in the pretty lights and colours.

As it’s Christmas, we have had lots of friendly encounters in bars and serendipitously stumbled across a brass band on Christmas Eve, who were playing an international selection of Christmas songs and raising money for a hospital in Uganda. That really got me feeling Christmassy!

Most places were closed for Christmas Day, so I am doubly glad that I did some research and booked us a Christmas dinner at EN Japanese Kitchen. Oh my.

EN serves a traditional eight-course kaiseki meal, though the sushi chef kept giving us little extras, which may or may not be related to Christmas. It was all outstanding.

Tomorrow we move on to Utrecht. I hope you are having a lovely midwinter.