Amsterdam Museums

The longer we live here, the more I have been realizing just how many museums there are in this city. I am constantly turning a corner on my explorations and finding a new one. There are over 50 museums here from the world famous to the just bizarre.

Honestly, it's the thought of sharing the bizarre with you that really prompted this entry, but we'll get to those in a few days (Ha! You'll just have to wait! Don't Google them...that's not fair).

First though, I really should highlight the world famous. You know...the must see museums if you only have a few days here...

Rijksmuseum

Website:

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/

Built in 1876 , Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is the largest museum in the Netherlands. It features a famous collection of works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals as well as delftware, sculpture, Asian art and prints.

The absolute masterpiece of the Rijksmuseum is Rembrant's 'Night Watch' (1642), which I'm sure you will recognize. Interesting fact that really makes my blood boil is that the painting was attacked with a bread knife by an unemployed school teacher, Wilhelmus de Rijk in 1975, resulting in a large zig-zag of slashes. It was successfully restored but some evidence of the damage is still observable close-up. What a jackass!!!

Another painting I'm sure most of you will recognize is Johannes Vermeer's 'The Milkmaid' (1658).

Van Gogh Museum

Website:

http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp

Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum houses the largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh in the world. The museum’s permanent collection includes paintings, drawings and letters.

Everybody has heard of Vincent Van Gogh. What I didn't realize until visiting this museum was that he was largely unknown during his lifetime. It wasn't until after his death (by a self inflicted gunshot wound at 37) that he became such an important painter in history. It's also VERY interesting to me that he didn't start painting until his late twenties. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches in less than a decade before his death. Amazing!

My favorite Van Gogh is 'Starry Night'. I have always been fascinated by it. It's not on display at the museum in Amsterdam unfortunately (it's at the MOMA in NYC), but I'm going to feature it anyway just because it's my blog.

Anne Frank Huis

Website:

http://www.annefrank.org/

The Anne Frank Huis (House) is literally a couple blocks from our apartment. We are practically neighbors! There is a decent coffee and bagel shop nearby. If I'm in a good mood, I like to go down there and offer to take English speaking tourist's pictures in front of the sign. They love that...

But on a serious note, the Anne Frank Huis is where a young Jewish girl, Anne Frank lived in hiding with her family for more than 2 years during World War II. The museum houses an exhibition about the persecution of the Jews as well as discrimination in general. Anne’s original diary and other notebooks are on display in the museum.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for some of the lesser known museums.

xxoo

So...let's see what has been going on since our move...

Those that follow me on Facebook probably already know that Penelope the pug had a very scary fall down the stairs. Very typical of this city, our place has several flights of extremely steep stairs. In fact, the stairs up to the second floor basically come up into the middle of the room and create a pit to the next floor on one side.

We knew that Penelope is losing her sight and depth perception with those stairs may be an issue. We didn't realize how bad her sight is, however, until getting into the city where there are many more objects to run into and stairs to fall down.

So, of course the first evening we are here she "went off the deep end" of the stairs. I saw her life flash before my eyes! She basically jumped up and walked it off. I couldn't believe it! The next day she had another spill down a different set of stairs that tore off a nail completely. I found a vet about a 10 minute walk from our place that I took her to yesterday. She got a clean bill of health and was prescribed puppy pain killers.

So, lesson learned!! She is now relegated to our bedroom with the door closed. She spends most of her time relaxing in her crate anyway. I also have to carry her down the 3 flights of winding stairs it takes to get to the street when it's time for a bathroom break. I'm just glad she is alright. She's 85 in human years!!!

Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention is that we are on a major tourist canal, so these really long boats full of tourists are constantly crusing by taking photos and gawking. Whenever I see one if I'm near the window, I have been waiving to them. In the coming weeks I am going to be featured in numerous photo slide shows in Asia. Ha ha...

This is outside of a restaurant down the street from us. I don't have much to say about it except that it's weird...

Our new home!!!

Here are some more pictures of our new apartment. We moved in yesterday!

Love it...

It's Spring in Holland and I'm sure you know what that means. Tulips! I mean, it was pretty much stated in the fine print of our residence applications that we are required to visit tulip country this time of year. It was in Dutch so I can't exactly verify that statement, however.

So, to make sure we were in compliance, we took a bus on Sunday about 25-30 miles southwest of Amsterdam to a lovely park they call Keukenhof. I forgot to charge my phone (ie. camera), so unfortunately I will have to just use some images off the web for you. They will be better anyway.

Here are your interesting facts about the place that I did not make up.

Keukenhof (or "Kitchen garden"), also known as the Garden of Europe, is situated near Lisse, Netherlands, and is the world's largest flower garden. Approximately seven million flower bulbs (4.5 million tulips in 100 varieties) total are planted annually in the park, which covers an area of 32 hectares.

Once you look past the 14.50 euro ($20.76) per person entry fee, how insanely crowded it was and the overall Disney theme park vibe of the place...it was really quite nice!

We came rather late in the season, however, and you could tell many of the flowers were on their last legs or had been harvested all together. In other words, the pictures you are seeing here that I borrowed from the web are WAY cooler than anything I would have taken. Especially since they don't feature a bunch of tourists wearing fanny packs and socks with their sandals!

All in all, I'm glad we were able to fulfill our residence obligation. Next!

Happy Queens Day!!

So, this post is a little late as Queen's Day was last Saturday...what are you gonna do?

WOW...what can I say about Queen's Day in Amsterdam? It was crazy. The biggest party day of the year here in Holland. Bigger that NYE apparently. It was complete chaos...and we liked it.

So...here's some history from the web:

Queen's day, or Koninginnedag, is a national holiday in the Netherlands. On this day we celebrate the birthday of the Queen of the Netherlands. Although it's originally the birthday of Queen Juliana (the mother of Queen Beatrix...the current Queen), not of Queen Beatrix, we celebrate her birthday on 30 April. Our Queen Beatrix birthday is really on the 31th January, but the winter isn't the time to party outside! Because of this Queen Beatrix officially celebrates her birthday on 30 April, so we can party with (hopefully) better weather! Isn't our Queen lovely?

Queen's Day is also a typical occasion for the world-famous Orange Craze. On this day most of the people wear orange clothing and creative orange accessories. The colour orange is a ubiquitous sight, referring to the name of our royal family, the House of Orange. Everywhere in the city you'll see orange banners, orange coloered foods and drinks. So don't forget your orange t-shirt when you join us in the Orange Craze!!!

..And HO BOY. I was out of place without an orange shirt. Lucky for her, Jessica is Syracuse ("The Orange") alumni so she had a shirt already. We both picked up some cheap orange sunglasses as you will see, so I fit in a bit. I needed some orange shoes and I would have been good to go.

We met a few fellow Ex-Pats from the States a week or so ago and ended up at a house party hosted by one of them. It was fun! We basically hung out the window and watched crazy orange people walk by on the street and cruise by on the canal. This girl had plastic red Solo cups shipped in from the States specifically for "flip cup"...an interesting college drinking game that I somehow missed during my years at University. I must have been too busy studying....yeah that's it! Of course, after setting aside my germ issues....I was pretty darn good at it.

What we witnessed all day out the window was tremendously packed boats with tremendously drunk people dancing and partying. Every time I looked out the window it looked like a maritime disaster waiting to happen. Many of them looked like they were on the verge of sinking. It was amazing!! I have some video, but it's not uploading very well...so...sorry!

We found a place!

View Larger Map

Move in date is May 13th. It is right on the outer canal of the city with an amazing view. It's fully furnished, so we won't have to worry about furniture, beds, dishes or anything.

Here is the front of the house. We have the top 2 sets of windows. There is a 3rd floor that only has windows in the back. You actually have to enter from the door on the far left in the picture that is 3-4 steps below the sidewalk.

Here is a shot from the 1st set of windows you see above, which is home to the master bedroom. All of the windows open wide for a great view of the canal and the happenings below.

Here is a shot from the top floor, which has the living room, kitchen and an office/bedroom.

There is then a 3rd floor with another bedroom. To access this floor this is a crazy steep spiral staircase in the living room with no handrails. I have a tendency to hurt myself on stairs, so I'm not sure how often I'll frequent that area. I know the pugs won't be attempting them. Especially blind Penelope.

More pictures to come when we move in!