Amsterdam: Day 3 - The second one's name was Isaac...

December 29th

Today we ambled down to the Rijksmuseum.  After yesterday, Dan had pretty much given up on the buses.  So we took a train and a tram.


Rijksmuseum - 

The Rijksmuseum is a national art and history museum of the Netherlands.  We had to wait about 20 minutes to get in as you can see by the lines below.  It was a fairly busy day for the museum.  

Dan mostly wanted to see the Dutch Masters, but it would be easy to spend days going through everything in the museum.

Main entrance to the Rijksmuseum.  The road is a bike path.

Jan Adam Kruseman -  "Portrait of WIlliam II, King of the Netherlands" This is a portrait of King William II in military uniform, but with a decidedly informal air.  Accompanied by his hound, he poses casually in the dunes, which in the Romantic era was considered the quintessentially Dutch landscape.

C. van Schaick - "Sint Nikolaas-vertellingen voor de jeugd (St Nicholas - stories for the young)"

Before he got a helper [Black Peter], Saint Nicholas had to perform all his duties by himself, both the pleasant and the unpleasant tasks.  In the story Alexander, or the punishment of discontentedness, the utterly provoked saint gives a rich, spoiled-rotten little boy, who is never satisfied with his gifts, a beating that he will remember for days.

Vincent van Gogh - "Self Portrait" Here van Gogh is being a fashionably dressed Parisian.  I had no idea he did SO MANY self portraits.  I thought he did two, at most three.

Jacobus van Looey - "Summer Luxuriance" 

I liked all the blue flowers.  Dan did not like this one as much. 

George Hendrik Breitner - "The Singel Bridge at the Paleisstraat in Amsterdam"  

Apparently the lady in the forefront was originally depicted as a maid, but Breitner got negative reviews, so he changed her to an elegant lady.

A bit of info before the next painting (feel free to skip this if you don't want to learn more than you have to):

The Hague School

Around 1870 there was a group of painters in The Hague intent on representing typical Dutch themes, such as the daily life of peasants and fishermen, the sea, the beach and the flat polder landscape.  Inspired by French landscape painters (the Barbizon School), the Hague artists ventured into the countryside in order to record nature.

Their broadly painted landscapes met with near instant success.  Initially the group was called the 'Grey School' because of its preference for muted colors.  Later this evolved into 'The Hague School'. 

Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël -  "A Windmill on a Polder Waterway known as 'In the Month of July'" 'Our country is saturated with color. ...I repeat, our country is not grey, not even in grey weather, nor are the dunes grey', wrote [] Gabriël in a letter.  Unlike many Hague School painters, he actually enjoyed depicting a beautiful summer day. So basically this guy was all F* you Hague School and your dreariness.

This is one of many stained glass windows in the Rijksmuseum dedicated to their famous Dutch Masters.   This window pays tribute to Rembrandt on the right-hand side.

These things must have been all the rage in their day.  I have seen cabinets like this in Florence (Italy), Bucharest (Romania), Sinaia (Romania), and now here Amsterdam (Netherlands).  I guess they were the thing to have in the 1700's.

Gabriel Metsu - "The Hunter's Present"

A hunter offers a dead bird to a young woman virtuously occupied with her sewing.  Is he trying to seduce her?  During the 17th  century 'vogelen' (literally "to bird") was slang for sexual intercourse.  The statuette of Cupid, the god of love, on the cupboard also alludes to this.  These kinds of "hunters's scenes" - especially due to their possible double meaning - were a popular subject in painting.

Erm...so this is a thing, with a fireplace, and....Delftware? maybe?   Anyway, it's a very clever photo of us.

"I'd like to spend my vacation - AT THE LIBRARY!" (Gold star to you if you get this reference.  If you don't check this.) This is the research library at the Rijksmuseum.

I don't have any info on this, but it most likely came of off a British ship.

This is Rembrandt's "The Night Watch."  This is as close as I could get to it, as this room was packed with people.  I used this painting as a study for my Lighting Design class in college.  Now you know.

These are Windmill cups from the mid 1600's.

Bartholomeus van der Helst - 

"Banquet at the Crossbowmen's Guild in Celebration of the Treaty of Münster"

Frances Franken II - "Allegory on the Abdication of Emperor Charles V in Brussels" 

There are so many fabulous things going on in this painting.   Just soak it all in.

A few places around Amsterdam have these large "I amsterdam" signs.  This is the one outside of the Rijksmuseum.

In the lobby? foyer?  hang out area of the Rijksmuseum they had this holographic type Christmas tree thing.

The Rijksmuseum had an exhibit on wedding dresses.  They displayed 15 wedding dresses from the "Modern Age", including a black wedding dress.

This concludes the Rijksmuseum portion of our adventure.

Van Gogh Museum -

Dan said he wasn't hungry, and then he smelled the Big American Hotdog stand.  

The sun setting while we wait to get into  the Van Gogh Museum.   Woo. The Van Gogh Museum really didn't allow photos.  You could take photos of "Photo Opportunity Walls" where you stood against a big wall covered in something Van Gogh related.   I was not that excited about this.   I snagged one photo (below) before I figured I'd get talked to.

An early self portrait by Van Gogh, before he got extra artsy and impressiony.

This concludes the Van Gogh Museum portion of our adventure.

Amsterdam Light Festival -

This is the third year of the Light Festival.  We chose to take a canal tour of it rather than a walking tour.  This killed two birds with one stone - see the Light Festival and take a canal tour.  I didn't buy a program, so you're getting what I remember about these light sculptures, which isn't much.

Forgive these not great photos.  We were in a moving boat and my mini tripod was not big enough to let the camera see out of the windows.  I was struggling with finding the best settings to get decent pictures.  I'm not happy with most of these, but you can at least get the idea of what was going on with the Light Festival.  

While we waited to board our boat, we were serenaded by accordion music.  We did not realize that it was being played live until we got around the wall and saw this gentleman playing.

Spheres on the water!  They changed color, sometimes as a group and sometimes as individuals.

Boats outlined with lights.  These were not part of the Light Festival, I just thought it was neat.

This is a light/shadow, water, and wind sculpture to create a sailing ship.  Depending on the wind the sails either move or slacken.  

Wavy lights on a bridge!  WOOOO!  

This is a lighthouse made out of lost shipping containers.  It symbolizes Amsterdam's history of being a might seaport.....or something.  It changed color.  It was nifty.

Amsterdam is a multicultural city.  This heart displays the different flags of the people who live and visit here.  I happened to catch it showing the Italian flag.

It picks up the home country of passing by cellphones and responds accordingly.  Don't ask me how it does this, I do not know.

Giant light up wind spinner doodad.  My nephew would be stoked.  My parents have a ton of these sculptural wind spinners (smaller of course) in their yard, and my nephew is fascinated by them.

Pretty light reflections off of a bridge.  Also not part of the Light Festival.

This is supposed to be representative of a mangrove swamp.  So there's that.

Multicolored tulips that change color!  One even randomly popped up out of the water.  I'm sure if it was supposed to do that or if it was having difficulties.

This concludes the Amsterdam Light Festival Canal Tour portion of our adventure.

We finished the tour (it was mostly a big loop) and wandered back to the train station.  No more bus attempts for us.

I will end today with the third verse of our song:

The second one's name was I-I-saac.
The second one's name was I-I-saac.
I, I, saac saac saac.
I, I, saac saac saac.
The second one's name was I-I-saac.

Amsterdam: Day 2 - The first one's name was Abraham...

December 28th

This was a relaxed trip.  Only on one day did we set an alarm to get up early.  

Every other day we just got up whenever.

Seeing as it was fairly cold (0º C/32º F - I saw this knowing it is in the -20/-30/-40º F in the midwest) and my winter coat was in our still missing luggage we were trying to figure out what to do today.  We could either hang out in the hotel and wait for our luggage, or I could suck it up and hope we found a museum for me to stay warm in.   We chose the latter.

Our hotel was quite close to the airport but a bit far from downtown.  Dan had read that there were all sorts of busses and other public transportation that we could take to get us around.  This morning started with trying to figure out how the public transportation system works.  We couldn't figure out the busses, but found that a train goes between the airport, Schipol, and downtown, Amsterdam Centraal.   Train adventure!

My first photo from Amsterdam!  I took this from the train going into downtown.

As I said, Amsterdam has a lot of public transportation.  Maybe too much.  There are trains, trams, busses, metros, ferries, and I'm sure I'm missing one or two others.  Again we tried to figure out a bus to get us over to the museum district, but failed.  We ultimately figured out the trams and took one of those over to where a cluster of museums are.

Today we thought we'd go to the Van Gogh Museum but upon reaching it, discovered quite a long line to get into the museum.  Remember, I don't have a winter coat and I am cold.  We decided to try to hit one of the other museums instead that doesn't have as long of a line.  We stumble upon the Stedelijk Museum, which turns out to mostly be modern art.   Some of this is okay.  Some of it is not.

Stedelijk Museum -

Roy Lichtenstein - "As I Opened Fire"

 Remember kids, comic books aren't art, but paintings of comic books are art.  Or some nonsense like that.   There is some amazing artwork in comic books, fyi.  I personally like the artwork of P. Craig Russell, but I digress.  

ANYWAY.

Formally, Lichtenstein appropriated images from popular culture. He inserted them into a fine art context enlarging them, altering them slightly and painting them on canvas. Thus, the artist obscured the border of high and low art. 

Jeff Koons - "Ushering in Banality"

Who doesn't like a giant pig with tiny angels shoving it around?

Ushering in Banality shows an enlarged figurine that differs little from its sources of inspiration, which are small statuettes frequently seen as ornamental decoration. The sculpture diverges from its basis in its scale. By increasing the size and giving it this particular title the artist questions both the relationship between art and commodity as well as fine art and kitsch. Koons attests that the work is not meant to be ironic; rather, he would like to give the general public what they request without questioning taste.

This is the Family Lab, and may have been my favorite part of the museum.  Only the colors deemed pure by Mondriaan are used (Red, Yellow, Blue, White, and Black).  As you can see the walls were giant Lego boards on which you could assemble whatever Lego art you wanted.  It was busy when we got to it, so we did not play.

Piet Mondrian - "Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue, and Grey, 1920"

Speaking of Piet Mondriaan, this is one of his.  My mom likes these, or mentioned once that she did.  I think.  So this one is for you mom or maybe I'm just wrong.

Wassily Kandinsky - "Deux Entourages (Two Surroundings)"

Modern art is funny to me, because I like this, but I think something like a plain blue canvas is pointless.  I am not sure where the line is for me between modern art being appealing and interesting and being puerile and boring.

Max Pechstein - "Hafen von Leba" (Leba Harbor)

Jan Sluijters - "Bal Tabarin" 

Donald Judd - "Untitled" There's some nonsense about the artist wanting harmony and not harmony at the same time.  Whatever. If you can't be bothered to name your art I can't be bothered to care.  Dan liked the art blocks.  I am displaying them.

Paul Derrez - "Australian Tits" I just thought this was funny.  There's all this "deep" art and examples of amazing design (which I really needed my friend Will to explain to me why it was amazing.  Most of it looked uncomfortable and awkward).  And then there's this. It's a boob necklace!  Tee hee.  Boobies.

A view out of the Stedelijk Museum onto the big park that runs between the museums.

This concludes the Stedelijk Museum portion of our adventure.

Wandering around Amsterdam -

Amsterdam still had many of its Christmas lights out. This made many of the streets very pretty. Also I have no clue what the DNA-Spray warning sign is all about.  DNA may rain down upon you if you aren't careful?  Flash DNA storms?   Anyone know?

The courtyard outside of the Hard Rock Cafe had a big outdoor chess set.  

These two seem to have only recently started their game.

The outer ring of lights in the courtyard were all chess pieces. 

This house of cards was part of the Amsterdam Light Festival (there will be more on this later).   This installation is supposed to represent something about how society is fragile.  If one card is taken away the whole thing tumbles down.  Or something like that. Dan being artsy (left).

We went to the Amsterdam Sex Museum, which had some interesting things and some very silly things. It was also something that was open late (the other museums close around 17:00) and got me out of the cold for a while. The museum followed a winding three-story path.  It contained paintings, pictures, sculptures, video, weird animatronics, knives, plates, fans, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.

If you are lactose intolerant, look away!   Otherwise, have you ever seen anything so magnificent as all this cheese?!   CHEEEEESE! Dan among the Edam (above).

This bar/restaurant is The Grasshopper.  The food was very good.  

This more or less ends our meandering for the evening.

We tried to figure out how to get a bus back to the hotel, but I was quickly be coming a popsicle and just wanted to take the train back rather than stand in the cold trying to decipher the bus schedule.  

So we did.

Dan - 0, Buses - 3

Today I will end with the second verse of our song:

The first one's name was Ab-ra-ham.

The first one's name was Ab-ra-ham.

Ab-ra, Ab-ra, ham ham ham.

Ab-ra, Ab-ra, ham ham ham.

The first one's name was Ab-ra-ham.

Amsterdam: Day 1 - Once there were three fishermen...

December 27th

Getting to Amsterdam proved a bit unpleasant.  

We arrived at the Naples airport to find our flight had been delayed due to bad weather in Frankfurt where our connection was.  This was not a concern, the check-in desks day told us, because all flights in Frankfurt had been grounded.  Hmmm....

We waited in the Naples airport.  I played my 3DS (gameboy to you mom) and Dan napped.  I went on a mission to find peanuts and discovered that the Naples airport does not have any sort of food establishment that just sells snacks.  I could buy some sort of fancy chocolates, an actual meal, or balls of mozzarella, but no snacks.  This was irritating.  Anyway, some two/3 hours after we arrived at the airport we boarded our plane to Frankfurt.

We wait for half an hour on the tarmac because we have again been delayed.  I continue to play my 3DS while Dan pokes his Kindle.

We finally land in Frankfurt with much confusion.  Not enough people on our flight are connecting to Amsterdam, so we don't know where our connection is, if it is still here.  Our connection has departed, so we head in the direction of the gate for the next flight to Amsterdam.  On our way we pass the Lufthansa customer service desk.  It has a line probably a quarter of a mile long.  No joke.  Dan is pleased that there is a line instead of the expected Neapolitan mob that we are used to.  He gets in the line and I go off to find the other Amsterdam flight.

I find the desk and manage to get a standby ticket for the flight.  They will not issue a standby ticket for Dan because I don't have his ticket information.  I walk back to find Dan, who has moved maybe 10 feet since I left him.  I get his ticket info and head back to the desk.  Of course I can't get the same person I spoke to last time and the new person is much more concerned with IDs and proper verifications (the other person did not ask me for any ID).  I go back to find Dan who has moved about 15 feet this time and tell him to go talk to the gate desk.  I will wait in the long line.

I wait and continue to play my 3DS.

Dan successfully acquires a standby ticket.  The flight is supposed to start boarding in 20 minutes.  There is no way we are getting to the end of the customer service line in 20 minutes, so we take our chances and head off to get a snack and to see if we can get on this flight.

We manage to make it on the flight, Dan even gets and emergency exit row seat (woo leg room).  Unfortunately, when we land, it becomes clear that our luggage has not made it out with us.  This is mostly of concern because my winter coat is in my checked bag.  Dan wanders off to find the lost luggage office and returns with two overnight kits from the airlines.

We grab a taxi to our hotel, because by this time, about midnight/1 am, the free shuttle service has stopped running.

We are amused at the differences between the Male and Female overnight kits.  The Male kit has a toothbrush, brush, and razor that are all black and shaving cream.  The Female kit has a toothbrush and brush that are white, no razor nor shaving cream, but it has lotion.  Each has an XL or XXXL plain t-shirt inside.

So concludes our adventure for today.



I end with the first verse of a song my mom used to sing with my brothers and me when we were kids and is the only thing I really knew that had anything to do with Amsterdam for a long time:

Once there were three fish-e-rmen.
Once there were three fish-e-rmen.
Fish-er, fish-er, men men men.
Fish-er, fish-er, men men men.
Once there were three fish-er-men.