On the tourist trail.
Ok, so we haven't seen any lions here but they are the national emblem of The Netherlends so I'm happy to take some artistic license for the sake of a catchy title. Besides, the Amsterdam Zoo is not far from here and I'm sure they have lions.
Now, time to get some of the tourist stuff out of the way; today we went to the Royal Palace which was actually quite cool. Did you know Napolean was the king of Holland? Neither did I. Actually, it was his brother, Louis. He sure lived lush, not that you'd know it from his fussy, ill-tempered French wife, Hortense de Beauharnais, who complained that her bedroom was plain and smelly. Plain? The damn room was gilded! I don't know how they do things in Frenchie-land but I'd be willing to bet that pretty much everyone I know would be reasonably bloody happy with a room like Hortense had. Bloody cheese-eaters.
We also went to the Botanic Gardens which were ok but, I have to say, the Adelaide Botanic Gardens fare quite well in comparison.
The highlight however would be, without a doubt, the two museums we visited: The van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum. If you ever visit Amsterdam, you have to put these two places on your "Must see" list.
The Rijksmuseum does an admirable job of taking you through the history of Amsterdam via artifacts and paintings - I'd highly recommend the audio tour (about 5 euros) which tells a fabulous story as you progress from gallery to gallery. For me, the absolute highlight was seeing Rembrandt's most famous painting: "De Nichtwacht" (or, as it's more properly named, The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch - what a wordy bunch the Dutch are). We've all seen it in books and maybe even on a documentary, but I was unprepared for the sheer size and brilliance of this masterpiece in person. Despite several attempts by a couple of complete nutters to destroy the painting (acid and a knife attack), it is, in every sense, astounding. I have to say it did bring a slight moistness to my eyes.
Next up: the van Gogh Museum. This one was Holly's choice but I was very pleasantly surprised. Obviously, there's more than just van Gogh's here but most of the big vG's you'd expect to see are there: Blue Irises, Sunflowers, etc but unfortunately we didn't get to see Starry Night. However, if you're a van Gogh fan, hell, even if you're not, it's definitely worth a visit.
After being all cultural and that, we hit a couple of pubs to rest our tired feet, drink beer and eat meatballs by a canal. Fantastic! Tomorrow we say goodbye to Amsterdam but we've had a good time here; the people are large and largely friendly, the canals and flowers are pretty and the beer is cold.
More pictures from Amsterdam: Amsterdam Gallery
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