Day 2 – Monday – The Rijksmuseum

Today’s excursion has been to the Rijksmuseum – the magnificent art gallery in the centre of Amsterdam. (We read today that it was re-opened in April, after major refurbishment, so we feel privileged to be able to visit).  The gallery is laid out chronologically and gives an excellent narrative in how the styles of art have evolved over the centuries, why they evolved the way   they did, and who the main players were.

A picture paints a thousand words, so I've uploaded about 20 photos to give you a feel of what we've been looking at.  The museum starts at about 1100 A.D. and moves forward from there, highlighting the early religious art, which was then followed by much more individualised work with lots of portraits, leading to more everyday scenes, landscapes, the through to impressionist art.  Interspersed in all of this was a good mix of military art, as well as furniture, and pottery in the form of delft pottery. Its piece de resistance is the Night Watch by Rembrandt.

I’m starting to think that the Dutch love queues.  All the museums advise you to buy tickets in advance to avoid the queues, and so we’re well prepared.  Having said that it would be easy to get it wrong and find yourself trapped in a queue.  We got to the Rijksmuseum at about 10 am, with our pre-purchased tickets.  That’s early, so no problem for us.  By the time we had finished after 1pm, people arriving were queuing to get in the door (about 50 metres and moving at drip feed pace), then queue once inside to buy a ticket to get into the galleries (about 100m). If you wished to leave anything in the cloak room – a queue, the toilet (I say toilet because for the woman there was only one working and the queue was running at 25 minutes – while I waited for Anne).  There was a queue for the museum café, despite their being loads of other café’s within a couple of minutes walk outside.

Anyway, the trip to the Rijksmuseum was hugely enjoyable.  It is a magnificent building and a beautiful display piece for about 8,000 of the 1 million art pieces that it has in its collection.

Our walk around Amsterdam has reminded us of a few other things that Amsterdam and Holland are famous for, but that had kinda slipped our mind in the run up to researching lots of other parts of our holiday.  First up Marijuana – the smell of it – everywhere, the seeds for it, or a starter kit – at the flower market, smoking paraphanelia – at specialist retailiers dotted liberally (what else) round the place.  Need to know more, go to the Hash, Marijuana and Hemp Museum, right here in Amsterdam.  Rated number 97 out of 255 attractions in Amsterdam by Trip Advisor.  It would have been higher, but most people who went there, got the munchies and went for a burger afterwards, or were too chilled out to write a review.

Then there are clogs.  The wooden shoes famous around the world have moved into the 21^st century…… and Wainuiomata.  Yes, you can now get fluffy clogs, with slip resistant soles.  You can of course still get the original wooden clogs, but I don’t think there will be room in my bag for either type.  To date, I haven’t seen anybody actually wearing clogs, but every tourist shop has an absolute wall full of them.

Anyway, that’s it for today.  Tomorrow we are going on a canal cruise, then visiting Anne Frank’s House – talk soon.