bye bye Amsterdam

What? We left Amsterdam 6, 7 weeks ago? gaaaaaaaaaaa!
Here are some final views from the continent:
 

Last days- Leiden

A last trip to Leiden and a visit to the Hortus Botanicus, the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, dating back to 1590.
hortus botanicus

Last days- Kröller-Müller Museum

The Kröller-Müller Museum is an art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park near Arnhem (Its in the middle of a forest). The museum was founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller and opened in 1938. It has the second-largest collection of paintings in the world by Vincent van Gogh. 

krollermuller

Alcazaba

In Malaga, June 18......climbed the big hill to the top of the Alcazaba which is a palatial fortification in Málaga. It was built by the Hammudid dynasty in the early 11th century. This is the best-preserved alcazaba (from the Arabic al-qasbah, meaning "citadel") in Spain. Adjacent to the entrance of the Alcazaba are remnants of a Roman theater dating to the 1st century BC, which are undergoing restoration. Some of the Roman-era materials were reused in the Moorish construction of the Alcazaba.

Alhambra

The Alhambra takes its name from the Arabic al-qala’a al-hamra (the Red Castle, the Red One, the Red Fortress, etc.). Its on my tee-shirt!

The first palace on the site was built by Samuel Ha-Nagid, the Jewish grand vizier of one of Granada’s 11th-century Zirid sultans. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Nasrid emirs turned the area into a fortress-palace complex, adjoined by a village of which only ruins remain. Completed towards the end of Muslim rule of Spain by Yusuf I (1333–1353) and Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada (1353–1391), the Alhambra is a reflection of the culture of the last centuries of the Moorish rule of Al Andalus (Muslim Spain), reduced to the Nasrid Emirate of Granada. It is a place where artists and intellectuals had taken refuge as the Reconquista by Spanish Christians won victories over Al Andalus.

After the Reconquista, the Alhambra’s mosque was replaced with a church, and the Convento de San Francisco (now the Parador de Granada) was built. Carlos I (also known as the Habsburg emperor Charles V), grandson of the Catholic Monarchs, had a wing of the palaces destroyed to make space for his huge Renaissance work, the Palacio de Carlos V. During the Napoleonic occupation, the Alhambra was used as a barracks and nearly blown up. What you see today has been heavily but respectfully restored.