We arrived at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport EARLY Thursday morning May 25th and taxied to our hotel, the Radisson Blu downtown, where we (fortunately) were able to check-in before the 3:00 pm usual check-in time. The Radisson is very centrally located near the train station and just a block from the Red Light district! (As Dan wryly noted). It also has the best FULL breakfast of our trip, omelettes to order, cappuccino for days...
The first jet lag recovery day was spent walking around town, finding the train station (to book our next destination) and figuring out the city tram system. I had booked an afternoon canal boat ride online, with "wine & cheese"...on a covered boat in case of rain. Fortunately, it didn't rain...actually we had gloriously sunny days for two weeks. But just in case, I didn't fancy us floating around the canals in an open boat in the rain drinking cheap wine. The ride was nice, covered and uncrowded, the wine & cheese was... not so much.
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| Covered Boat ride tourists |
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| Canal scene |
Our first day adventures included a visit to a historic canal house: the Willet House (Herengracht 605), in one of Amsterdam's A+ neighborhoods, elegant 18th &19th century townhouses overlooking Herengracht Canal. The house was furnished with period pieces (originals had been sold off years ago) to recreate the ambience of domestic living in the city in the 1800s. We could have moved in.  |
| Willet House guests |
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| stairwell guardian |
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| living room |
Over the next three days our Amsterdam itinerary included the Van Gogh Museum, Rijksmuseum (and the Vermeer exhibition) and Stedelijk Museum... the culture vulture trifecta! I planned one museum a day (to combat overload fatigue), with a couple side trips to other venues... At least that was the plan.
(See "Full Disclosure" below).
As mother always said..."If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."
And one of my cardinal rules of traveling: Stay flexible...and enjoy whatever happens.
I had made reservations on line for both the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh. Those were in in short half-hour increments, so plan accordingly when booking! The Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art is not as well-known as the other two and reservations for that were for all day: "1000 to 1700". Not so in-demand.
Besides overdosing on Dutch culture at the museums, we continued our search for good Italian restaurants...forget Dutch herring....we needed pasta. I had pre-booked a couple restaurants before we left home, top-rated Dutch, they were ok, (except for the gimmicky one where you picked out your fish...I don't wish to look my dinner in the eye), but the ones we found walking around town turned out to be better. One great Italian restaurant we ate at twice...actually three times if you include expresso one night. So much for overplanning... |
| Rijksmuseum tourist |
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| Vemeer- Milkmaid |
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| Van Gogh- Cornfield with Crows |
Friday evening May 26th we had tickets for the symphony, a concert at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, considered one of the most acoustically perfect auditoriums in Europe. We heard Mahler's 5th to a full house.  |
| Locals at the Symphony |
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| Night at the Symphony |
Haarlem:
After 4 days in (endlessly) tourist-packed Amsterdam, on Sunday we took a 20 minute train ride to the coast for a side trip to the town of Haarlem, home of the Frans Hals Museum, Teyler's Museum, (mansion and oldest museum in The Netherlands), and one significant windmill.  |
| Haarlem windmill |
Haarlem was literally a breath of fresh air...not crowded with tourists on a Sunday morning...actually, we had the town to ourselves until late morning. This Haarlem windmill was a rebuilt flour mill originally operating in the 1700's. It burned in the early 20th century and took almost 100 years to be reconstructed to its original hand-crafted specifications.
We visited the Frans Hals Museum, built in a converted monastery for works by Haarlem's premier artist and also the Teylers Museum, which was in the mansion Teyler lived in in 1784...full of his bizarre collections, dinosaur bones and 18th century scientific experiments, an early acid battery apparatus being one.
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| Frans Hals Museum |
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| Teyler Museum collections |
We trained back to Amsterdam Sunday afternoon and had one more day of museum-hopping before heading south to The Hague on Tuesday morning.
On Monday we took in several venues: a few blocks from our hotel was the The Hortus Botanical Garden, (recommended by our horticulturalist friend, Cindy). Hortus was a lovely small garden in a residential part of town with a two-story greenhouse packed with exotic tropical flora.
From the Hortus we visited Rembrandt House & Museum, (where Rembrandt lived and worked for 20+ years until going bankrupt and losing the house and all his valuables). He conducted art classes on the third floor...talk about the Master's touch.
In the afternoon we hopped a tram back to the Museum Plain and visited the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art. I had purchased online tickets, so no waiting. The Impressionists (including a couple Van Goghs) were our favorites.
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| Bride & Groom at Hortus |
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Not the bride at Hortus
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| Significant rock in the Hortus |
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| Rembrandt House |
Since Dan prefers representational art ... "An apple should look like an APPLE!" some of the Stedelijk's modern collection was a bit much for him....time to move on...
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| Metal trash sculpture- Stedelijk |
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Matisse and me at the Stedelijk
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| Rembrandt House |
Full Disclosure: We ALMOST missed the Vermeer Exhibition, (the primary reason for the trip), by my misreading the reservation date on the booking....in Europe it's DAY-month-year...so we were booked for a week later than I had planned. So when we arrived in Brussels the following week, the next morning we caught a train back to Amsterdam to see the Vermeer....whew.
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