Museums, Not Coffeehouses - Exploring Amsterdam

A typical street in old Amsterdam

Since the early morning rain had cleared off, we decided to walk the mile or so to the museum district. First on tap was the Rijksmuseum - a huge art museum built by the same wacky baroque architect as Centraal Station. Here's a picture of a bit of the outside (it's hard to get much of the building in a picture as it's so huge):

Luckily when we were there they were having a special exhibit of Dutch still life painting - fabulous stuff. I spent most of my time just looking at that (though I did make a few more stops to check out the Rembrandts and the Indian statuary). Sadly, we dragged ourselves away, as we still wanted to catch the Van Gogh Museum that day. Next time I'll devote a couple of days just to the Rijksmuseum - it's that big...

The Van Gogh Museum, was, as one might expect, ridiculously crowded, but an amazing experience nonetheless. They have over 200 of his works, with the paintings grouped in chronological order, with a fair amount of biographical text explaining what was going on in his life at the time those paintings were being created. It was fascinating to see the progression of his art, from the early, more straightforward representational works to the boldly colored, madly swirling masterpieces he finished just before taking his own life. The last painting in the sequence is the famous "Wheat Field with Crows," and despite the explanational material's dry warning not to sentimentalize the work (there's no direct evidence that this was his last painting, apparently), it's hard not to see death and despair in the depiction of the dead-end road, with the ominous flock of crows overhead. It was just so sad to think of this burning genius whose life ended far too soon - I got more than a bit damp around the eyes, and I was far from the only one. Bena said later that she'd never seen so many sad faces at an art museum before...

We wandered around the city for a while longer, trying to decide where to go for dinner, when the weather decided for us. The rain came back with a vengeance, and we quickly decided that the Indonesian place across the street would do just nicely :-) Luckily, the weather made a good choice, as it was excellent. Afterwards we went on a canal boat tour of the city (figuring we'd see a bit more than we would have by foot alone). As it had stopped raining again by then, it was a pleasant ride.

Night view of the canals

We decided we'd best forego Amsterdam's nightlife and head back to the B&B after that, as we had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to catch the train to the morning ferry back to England. We got a bit lost on the way back, and saw a bit more of Amsterdam than we meant to as a result, though it did mean we blundered onto the street with the Anne Frank House. It was closed by then, of course, so we had to content ourselves with looking at it from the outside - a surprisingly modern looking building (I suppose they had to make some upgrades to handle the huge amount of tourists who visit). Eventually we found the right street and our B&B, and settled in to get a bit of sleep before having to wake at such an ungodly hour.

We didn't have time to visit any of Amsterdam's many coffeehouses.

On to Scotland