Canadutch
Five years ago my husband and I visited the Lock of Love art installation that was put up on Valentine’s Day of that year (photo from 2010 above). We bought a lock and had it engraved so that we could put it on there and throw away the key, thus cementing our love forever (or so the story goes!). Being only about two weeks after the thing was put in place, we were one of the first people to put up a lock, so we had our choice of where to put it. We went for in the dip of the heart on the top and hoped that we’d be able to find it again when we returned one day.
I was looking for something on my blog a while back and came across that entry, which got me to thinking about it and wondering if there were a lot more locks on it now. I put the date in the calendar to go back today, which was exactly five years since we put the lock up.
It has been a beautiful spring day today and everywhere we went we saw the budding signs of spring. It gave me a moment of pause where I stopped to sigh and take notice of how dreadfully I will probably miss the early spring that we get every year in the Netherlands. I love this time of year, when the country comes back to life and everything around us is so bright and colorful. It’s one thing I can say I truly love about this country.
As you can see from the above photo, there aren’t that many locks on it all, nothing like I was expecting after 5 years. I think it’s largely to do with the fact that it’s located in Delftshaven rather than somewhere closer to the city center where there’s a lot of foot traffic and tourists. A few months ago when I was taking some photos around Hotel New York I noticed that there were locks all over the new Rijnhavenbrug, which already has far more locks than this one. In a way, I’m kind of glad that so few people know about it or happen across it. If it were in the city center, for example, you probably wouldn’t even see a patch of red anymore for all the locks. This is kind of like a little romantic secret of Rotterdam, ya know?
We did eventually find our lock. It’s a little rusty and worse for wear but the inscription “Xammy Forever” is still visible. For new readers, Xammy is a combination of our names (Xander and Tammy) which came about as a mistake many years ago, before we were even married, when my step-MIL mistakenly said it when trying to address one of us. It stuck and it became a bit of a petname for and between us. It says “Xammy Forever” inside our wedding ring and we’re collectively referred to as “The Xammies” by my in-laws.
Yeah, not a lot to say about this photo other than that humans suck and are never able to just let a beautiful thing be beautiful.
A new selfie was in order as well! Made much easier with the flip around screen on my new Sony A5000 camera! We’ve come along way, me and this dude, our lock is still holding strong and so are we!
Oh Rotterdam, I love you so…
