towering in the city

Three very different towers for today's Thursday Postcard Hunt, each, in their own way helping you to orientate yourself in their respective cities

First up is in Kuala Lumpur,  the Petronas Twin Towers (aka KLCC - Kuala Lumpur City Centre - Twin Towers), an interlinked pair of 88 storey skyscrapers which are visible from many places in the city.  Completed in 1996 in a Postmodern Islamist style.  As well as offices, a shopping mall, an oceanarium and a park inside the towers, there is that double decker skybridge at levels 41 and 42.

Contrast that with this Munttoren, part of one of the original gates in the medieval city wall of Amsterdam.  Built in the late 1400s, much of it was destroyed in a fire in 1618, and rebuilt in Amsterdam Renaissance style in 1620 with four clockfaces and a carillon of bells.  The bells chime every quarter hour.

Fun fact, when I lived in Amsterdam and still getting used to the horseshoe shaped streets and canals, I would often get disoriented and only realize it when I was back at the Munt for the nth time.  It was my first time living in a city that was not laid out in a grid pattern and it took me a looong time to get used to it!

Lastly, there is the CN Tower in Toronto.  The land it stands on was reclaimed from Lake Ontario, so while you can see it for miles you know that there is not much south of the tower except the lake.  It opened in 1976.  Today it is not so isolated as it appears in this 1980s postcard and many, many super tall buildings have gone up on the waterfront.  It is hard to remember that those two black buildings just to the right were once the tallest buildings when they were built in the late 1960s!