Welcome to my blog!


This is blog is about me dabbling with a little bit of everything, and not being particularly good at anything. And about the places I've been either on vacation or SAG:ing my husbands bicycle trips.


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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Day 4 - Amsterdam - July 5, 2013

We had breakfast at the hotel again, since it is included in our stay. I do have to say that this is a really nice hotel and if I ever come back here, I wouldn't mind staying here again. Today we went to see the Van Gogh Museum. We took a tram there, which was easy this time since this museum is really close to the Rijksmuseum. We spent a few hours there. They do have a very good collection of Van Gogh's and also explain some of the restoration projects and how he painted over paintings or used the backside to paint another painting there. They also said that some of the colors he mixed himself, like all the purples, the red has faded and only the blue color remains.

Van Gogh paintings that have another painting on the back.

Van Gogh's palette

Van Gogh's self-portrait, where the red has
faded and only blue remains from the purple
color he mixed himself


Van Gogh




Van Gogh



From there we took a couple of trams and ended up near the Anne Frank House. I would have loved to go and see it, but the line was huge and I didn't want to spend the afternoon lining up. Close to Anne's house is the Westerkerk, where Rembrandt is buried, but that was closed today also. So we kept walking thinking that we'll go and do cheese tasting, but we would have had to wait couple of hours for that too. Since neither of us were hungry we just had a quick milkshake and kept going. We ended up going to the Amsterdam Museum, which was interesting, but very confusing. But then again, maybe we didn't follow it correctly. It is not on my favorites list for museums. 

Jeff waiting for a tram in Amsterdam

Westerkerk

Anne Frank House


Anne Frank House

Entrance to Amsterdam Museum

Modern art, carpet squares from 179 different
countries who's nationalities live in Amsterdam

A medieval shoe found in Amsterdam

Mechanical Goliath
















We still had a couple of the Holland Pass tickets left so we went to see the Oude Kerk, Old Church. They had Rembrandt's wife's grave inside it. I think I would have liked it more if they didn't have all that modern art all over the place. Afterwards we were getting thirsty and decided to have a small beer by a canal. We ended up having couple of elderly sisters sitting on the same table and even though their English was not that good we ended up knowing quite a bit about them.

Oude Kerk

Ceiling inside the Oude Kerk 

One of the staircases in Oude Kerk

Rembrandt's marriage registry

Saskia Rembrandt's tomb









































Waiting for our drinks by a canal side cafe


Still one more pass left each so we decided to go and do another canal cruise. This time we went on the Grey Line cruises and they did a little bit different route and explained different things too.


Along a canal cruise

Along a canal cruise

Along a canal cruise


We were starting to get hungry and it was getting to be dinner time anyway. We were looking for a nice restaurant with outdoor tables. We ended up near the Neuwmarkt. I don't even know the name of the place, it was pretty small. The food was excellent and service was good, even though there were bikes and people walking by us all the time. I did find the restaurant, it is Cafe Piazza. Now back at the hotel and getting ready to move on to tomorrow.

Street side table, waiting for dinner

Some of the many "things" that went by, I think these might
be pub crawlers

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