Here are some of our favorite photos from the trip (each photo is a thumbnail linked to a higher quality picture.):
1) Albert Cuyp Market, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - After a long, tiring over-night flight (during which Jonna slept and I did 8 hours of uncomfortable yoga while blindfolded and packed into a 2 foot square cube) we arrived in Amsterdam. We caffeinated up and then hit the streets to explore a new-to-us city. Our first stop was the Albert Cuypstraat Markt, an outdoor market that covered about five blocks, to find said caffeine. After walking a few blocks to check out the street booths we found a delicious smelling bakery that had a fine tea selection and some yummy treats to go with it.
2) Floating Tulip Market, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - Sufficiently charged up by our tea we next walked over to the old city center to see the floating flower market. It is a bit of a tourist trap but it was still neat thousands of tulip bulps for sale.
3) Katten Kabinet Musuem, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - Our real reason to be in this part of old town was to visit the Kattenkabinet an art museum dedicated to cat themed artwork. We got there early so found another cafe for more caffeine while we waited. The museum was small but cute. As a bonus they had actual cats wandering around inside so we could get a little kitty fix while enjoying the artwork. Besides, we'll never complain about being overwhelmed with cat images.
4) Katten Kabinet Musuem, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - Here Jonna poses next to the sign for the Katten Kabinet. Right across the street was one of the many scenic canals that encircle the old city center of Amsterdam and the Katten Kabinet is located in one of the historic canal houses.
5) Moco Musuem, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - Next was a cheap lunch - wok fried noodles and veggies ...and more caffeine. We headed back to the hotel via the museum district so we could scout out which museums we'd hit up over the next few days. The forecasted steady rain rolled in but we still ventured a block away in the evening to see the Moco modern art museum - very cool works by Warhol, Basquiat, Haring, The Kid, Banksy, JD and others. This Banksy has long been a favorite so to see it in person was thrilling. So thrilling, in fact, that I bought a T-shirt with this image on it!
6) Moco Musuem, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - Another famous Banksy, "Girl and Balloon", that I've long thought was touching.
7) Moco Musuem, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - The downstairs had some seriously trippy immersive digital art installations including one, Studio Irma's "Diamond Matrix", with kaleidoscopic mirrors, diamond shaped LED lights that pulsed with different colors and pumping dance music.
8) Canal Tour, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - After getting our minds blown at Moco we returned to the hotel to wait for cousin Heather to arrive. By the same she got checked into our hotel I was sleep crashing but managed to rally one last time so we could find dinner (take-away Suriname food) and so we could do a 90 minute night time canal boat tour with Those Dam Boat Guys. Thankfully, the boat was mostly enclosed and came with hot water bottles and lap blankets! The boat pilot was a real character for better and worse, but he did impart a lot of interesting history and culture ...even if some of the culture presented was a bit ...raw.
9) Canal Tour, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 16 - The canal tour made a big loop around the old city center while pointing out various landmarks. In the Reguliersgracht canal is the famous Seven Bridges view which is a popular spot for a canal photo. Here is my attempt to line-up all the bridges as the boat went past. After the canal cruise we caught a ride back to the hotel and crashed hard! It had been a long day but we got a great start on exploring Amsterdam.
10) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - For our first full day in Holland we covered some ground (historically, culturally and to a smaller degree geographically). After sleeping in later than expected (I blame yesterday's sleep deprivation) we made our tardy arrival at breakfast - Heather was actually up before us and waiting at the breakfast table for us ...that had never happened before!! After scarfing down a quick bite we were off on a tram/bus trip to the countryside north of Amsterdam to visit the open air folk museum/historical neighborhood of Zaanse Schans. This small village on the Zaan river was turned into a full scale history museum 50 years ago when old buildings from all over the Zaan river valley were brought to the area and restored creating a central location where visitors can learn all about the early industries, technologies and folk customs that built Holland into the leading world power in the 17th century.
11) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - Most of that industry was powered by wind and huge working windmills are a center piece of the village.
12) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - I was awed by the 400 year old engineering. We visited two windmills and could examine how they were architected and how they work. One, De Kat was a mill for grinding paint pigments and dyes
13) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - The second, The Young Sheep, was a lumber mill. It was fully automated - once a log was pulled from the canal and loaded onto a carriage the process of operating the saws and pulling the carriage forward was completely managed by the gears driven by the windmill. Fascinating!
14) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - We also visited a chocolate shop with ties back to 1815 when the first cacao was powdered in Holland. We took this photo just outside the Chocolate shop and then immediately went inside to escape the cold wind blowing across the river. Jonna and Heather got hot chocolate in order to warm back up!
15) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - We also visited a dairy which once produced cheese but is now a demonstration area and shop. They had a dizzying array of cheese options and lots of free samples with flavors ranging from delicious to just plain odd.
16) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - The diary also had a demonstration room where one of the ladies who worked there gave a very polished and informative short talk about how the cheese is made. She was quite impressive herself - she asked what languages people in the audience spoke and then proceeded to seemlessly switch betweeen three different languages while giving the demonstration.
17) Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, Netherlands, February 17 - Our final stop was at a wooden clog manufacturer. It was mainly a shop but they did have a set of 1914 French industrial tools, originally used to make WW I rifle stocks, which they used to automate the manufacture of traditional wooden shoes. Rather than hand carving shoes with a manual planes and knives they can put a wooden form into one side of the electric grinder and then follow the shape of that form to quickly copy it. The man doing the demonstration made a complete shoe, from a wooden block, in about three minutes. Very impressive and something the geek in my really enjoyed. We spent 4 hours in Zaanse Schans and despite the constant wintery blast that kept the windmills spinning I could have stayed longer but we had reservations back in Amsterdam so we had to jump on our return bus.
18) Anne Frank House Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 17 - We'd been so busy we skipped lunch and had growling stomachs for the whole trip back! Once back in Amsterdam we split up - Heather returned to the hotel to get a better coat and to retrieve our museum tickets while Jonna and I walked through old town to the western canals to find some food. We all met up at the Anne Frank museum at 6:15pm. We had booked a combo ticket that included a 30 minute introductory talk in addition to entrance to the museum. Both were well done but signage inside the museum made the introductory talk basically redundant.
19) Anne Frank House Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 17 - The museum is sparse, by the wishes of Otto Frank who wanted the building left as the Nazis had left it when the family was arrested. However, there are short videos, photos and a few momentos on display in the various rooms along with a hand-held audio guide that describes everything. It is sobering but also very interesting. After a long day of sightseeing and museums we headed back to the hotel to get a longer night of sleep.
20) FOAM Fotomuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - My feet were very sore after we did a museum marathon this day. We knew that visiting the Netherlands in February would mean the weather is a mix of cold, grey and wet. As a result, we researched museums before coming and ended up with a long list of interesting museums that could keep us busy indoors during our trip. Well, today was the day to put that planning to work. We had an early-ish breakfast and then headed out into the chilly, windy morning to see some sights. We walked over to eastern Amsterdam to our first stop - the FOAM Photography museum. They had two artists on display - both photographers from South Africa, one contemporary and one from 1960s. The contemporary work was interesting but it was the photos from the apartheid era that blew us away. The artist was Earnest Cole and he was a photojournalist in the 1960s who took tens of thousands of photos - first in South Aftica and then in the US. All his work was brave and powerful documenting the inequities in the racial systems in both countries. The museum had, I am guessing, over 100 photos on display and then it ended with a slide show with at least double that number projected on a wall. We were there for a little over 2 hours and I think I could have spent another hour easily. Wow!
21) Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - Next we walked a "U" to cross a bridge in order to end up directly across the canal in order to visit the Van Loon house museum. This is a large home which has housed the rich Van Loon family since the heyday of Dutch opulence in the late 1600s through to today. Imagine massive crystal chandeliers, antique mahogany furniture, giant portraits by noted artists, a separate carriage house for pampered horses and a downstairs servant's quarter area that housed 15 "helpers". I gotta say all that wealth and luxury rang pretty f'ing hollow after having just spent 2 hours seeing the racial inequities brought by the Dutch and English to South Africa during the time period the Van Loons were living the highlife. Context is everything...
22) Museum, Van Loon, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - The garden at the Van Loon house was nice. It was also nice to see what exists in the interior of the blocks - this spacious green area is completely invisible from outside on the street.
23) Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - After leaving the fancy home we walked back to the main museum park where we headed to the Stedelijk Modern Art Museum. This grand building is packed with thought provoking art which ran the gamut from "wow, stunning" to "hmmm, interesting" to "WTF is *that*?". It wasn't boring and I'll always take thought provoking over boring. One highlight was finding two rooms dedicated to colonial opposition to Dutch rule. Similar to what we saw at a museum in Copenhagen a few years ago, it was cool to see a museum acknowledging its colonial past and grappling with that history openly.
24) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - With brains thoroughly stimulated we went out into the park to enjoy the semi-sunshine that was filtered through a light cloud layer and to eat snacks on a bench in the park. We made a quick return to the hotel to get off our feet for a short time and then headed straight back to the museum park for our appointment at the Van Gogh museum. Heather had been working most of the day and then met up with a friend in the early afternoon so us gathering at the entrance to the Van Gogh museum was the first time we'd seen each other since early morning. One of the first famous pieces we saw was "The Potato Eaters" which we'd previously seen in Washington, DC back in 2008.
25) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - We all three went through the Van Gogh museum seeing all four floors and staying until they closed for the night. Lots of fantastic art in there, both by Van Gogh and his peers/influences. His unique approach to color, technique and presentation was very apparent when shown in contrast to other painters of the time. ...and, of course, seeing favorites like his sunflowers was incredible.
26) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 18 - There was also a section with about a dozen self-portraits all presented together. Amazing! We capped off the night with dinner at a recommended Suriname restaurant which was very good. Finally, we went back at the hotel where I could rest my tired feet. I sleep well that night!
27) Johannes Vermeer Special Exhibit, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 19 - Sorry for posting back-to-back pictures of paintings rather than travel images but this one has a special story that I think justifies it... If yesterday was a museum marathon because of the number of museums we visited then today was a ultra-marathon because of the thoroughness we put into visiting one museum. Before we came to Amsterdam we researched which sites we wanted to see and the Rijksmuseum, the national art museum, was at the top of the list. It is one of the great art museums of Europe and is not to be missed. What was particularly exciting is that a world renowned art exhibit featuring 28 of the surviving 37 paintings by Vermeer was opening the week before we were to fly to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, our research discovered that the entire multi-month run of the exhibit sold out immediately and so we couldn't buy tickets. (Insert frown emoji here.) Instead we bought tickets to the Rijksmuseum regular collection and would have to be content with that. This was our day and we dutifully lined up at the entrance. When the door person scanned us in there was a problem with our tickets because of a complication with a national museum discount card we had purchased. The security staff sent us to the ticket desk to get that sorted since we would have to re-pay the discount we had gotten online and that was longer available. The customer service person was flummoxed by all this and ended up selling us tickets to both the regular museum *and* the sold out Vermeer exhibit, all for the low price of 10 Euro each. We were so giddly we babbled like elementary kids as we sheepishly showed our tickets to the guards at the door to the Vemeer show. It was like winning the lottery for our own little Golden Ticket to the Wonka factory! Even was we were staring in awe at the first Vermeer paintings we were expecting security to grab us by our shirt collars and drag us out. But they didn't!
28) Johannes Vermeer Special Exhibit, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 19 - We got to see the whole exhibit and it was fantastic! What Vermeer did with details and light and composition is very special. His themes were pretty repetitive but gorgeous nonetheless. So we ended up spending 2 hours in the Vermeer show and walked out with our feet already sore.
29) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 19 - To get a little relief we had lunch at the museum cafe which had surprisingly good food. Let's hear it for European culture's high expectations around cuisine. Fed and rested we then plunged into the Rijksmuseum's massive general collection. First we went to the section that houses art from the century 1600-1700 - the golden era for the Dutch and the years of the country's most famous artist, Rembrandt. The hits just keep coming!
30) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 19 - As if being blown away by Vermeer wasn't enough there are more than a dozen Rembrandts on display and they are all huge paintings - often life size. The hall itself is three stories high thanks to a tall vaulted ceiling. The scale is amazing especially when filled with such big canvases. We spent an hour in the main hall and then split up to spend 45 minutes exploring the side halls at our own speeds. Because the museum focused just on Dutch artists the museum contains a diverse mix of objects, not just paintings. Ceramics, furniture, jewelry, sculptural pieces and even some architectural items are on display and always grouped by century so everything visible in a room is contemporary to everything around it. It is overwhelming! When we met back up we headed down a floor and split up again for another 1 1/2 hours. Jonna and I headed to a more modern section 1800-1900 which touched on modern movements like Impressionism and Romanticism. There was also a section on art in Dutch colonies like India, Java, Suriname, Brazil and the trading port Dejima in Japan. From there we jumped way back in time with a walk through the Medieval and Renaissance section (aka the churchy-church stuff) and then finished off by filling in the gap from earlier by seeing the art from 1700-1800.
31) Cuypers Library, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 19 - Another highlight in the Rijksmuseum is the Cuypers Art Library. A four story high library filled with gorgeous (and probably priceless) books and manuscripts.
32) Soenda Kelapa Restaurant, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 19 - We met back up with Heather just as the museum was closing for the evening and we were all museum zombies ...our brains turned to mush from absorbing so much. Not to mention that my feet were killing me - 6 hours of walking on marble floors and climbing marble staircases. Ouch! We got an Uber to a restaurant called Soenda Kelapa where we had dinner reservations and I have never been so happy to just sit in a car since it took a load off my tortured feet. Jonna had booked us into a highly reviewed, family owned Indonesia restaurant and it was delicious. We ordered a Rijsttafel - basically a table filling variety of small dishes along with big bowls of rice. We added a couple of veggie sides and all three of us dove in. Beans, eggplant, potatoes, carrots and boiled eggs with different sauces (plus some beef and chicken for the meat eaters). Desert was breaded and fried bananas and a fresh fruit salad. All very good. Exhausted, mentally fried and stuffed full of good food we returned to the hotel for the night. Tomorrow we hit the road to see more of the Netherlands but I think we used our four days in Amsterdam pretty well!
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