A day of separate activities. I visited the Rijksmuseum and Bruce did a half day tour.
The Rijksmuseum has recently been renovated and it is an easily accessible place. My purchase of a ticket yesterday meant I just walked straight in. There was a queue in the access road which wasn't too bad. They seemed to hold people and admit 20 or so at a time. This was at noon on a Monday; weekends would be worse. When I came out at 2 there was no queue.
Using the free Rijksmuseum app, I had my own walking tour. I did the 90 minute option which took me to great representations of the main periods on display. The museum is well set out with all works of a period on display - 1100-1600, 1600-1700, 1700-1800, 1800-1900 and then to the present day.
The exception is the Hall of Honour which consists solely of the grand masters, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals and their mates. The big attraction in every sense of the word is Night Watch. This is no shrinking violet and can be readily seen regardless of the crowd. It is massive. It is bracketed by two lesser known but equally impressive works of guards, one is 75 metres long and Rembrandt painted himself on the very left. Might as well get in the shot, eh?
I ventured to the 20th century works on the third floor. This is only accessible by stairs and was not worth the effort.
It is impossible to take in all that the museum has to offer. If you had a particular interest then there is a richness of items and paintings on display. Top this off with an impressive architectural masterpiece and this becomes a magnet for tourist and art lover alike.
Given that there was a queue for lunch, I headed to an outside cafe. The place was busy and after being ignored a few times by the wait staff, I decided to head to Vondel Park. This was a pleasant spot to have a sandwich and a glass of wine while listening to the sound of a ridiculous and overused laugh from a young lady at the neighboring table. Am I becoming a grumpy old man? No, I've probably got there already.
I headed into town and visited Magna, the shopping centre that used to be the Palace. It would make a good palace.
Headed back to the apartment dragging my sore feet.
Bruce had an interesting day. The tour left at 12.30 and a double decker bus was full. There is a huge International Conference of Cardiologists in Amsterdam at the moment. Some of these chest thumpers were on the tour. We only travelled 25 km from the centre of the city and we were well into the country. We visited a cheese shop, a fishing village which is now just a tourist attraction, did a cruise on a lake (largest in Western Europe), visited a clog factory and visited a town with lots of windmills. All very pretty and touristy. The guide chatted away quite fluently in four languages. The things I learnt were;
This country is called the Netherlands, not Holland. The Netherlands is made up of twelve provinces, only two of which have the name Holland in it; South and North Holland. It is called the Netherlands because more than 50% is below sea level.
27% of the Netherlands is on reclaimed land, where they have drained lakes. The population of 16,000,000 eat, on average, 21 kgs of cheese per person per year. Clogs are made from poplar wood and in olden days a fisherman would carve elaborate designs into a pair of clogs and leave them on the doorstep of the woman he wanted to marry. If the clogs had been taken inside in the morning, his proposal of marriage had been accepted. If they were still sitting on the doorstep, either his proposal had been rejected or she was out screwing around.
For dinner, we headed out to Rembrandt square. We passed on Cafe Nasty and Coco's Outback (lousy food and warm beer) and chose Pelangi, a nice Indonesian restaurant. We shared a rijstafel which was delicious and very filling. The map of Indonesia etched on the window next to us was disconcerting. Bali was missing so to compensate, they wrote "Bali" on the island of Timor!
Back home to pack, ready for our departure to Madrid.