Rembrandtplein is a pretty cool public square with large life scale bronze sculptures replicating Rembrandts famous painting the 'Night Watch' - cool idea for a public sculpture.
A quick stroll south, which really is quick as Amsterdam seems so compact and walkable, and we're in Museumplein. Such a pretty place. In the space of 20-30 minutes we've crossed over multiple canals, passed through multiple districts each with slightly different characters and nearly been run over by cyclists 5 times. So many bikes!
First thing that you see upon entering into the museum quarter is the 19th century fantasy like museum the Rijksmuseum. We pass through and under its pretty vaulted colonnade and arrive in the square at the "Iamsterdam" large letters. People, well tourists, are climbing all over the letters. We head for the Stedeljik museum. It has an interesting new entry wing fronting the green square. The exhibition is really interesting. We start with the modern design galleries which look particularly at Dutch and European design. There's lots of furniture, graphic design, industrial design, jewellery and art on display in the collection. Quite impressive. I really appreciated the De Stijl and Rietveld parts.
We then head into a different gallery which was celebrating 100 years since the Amsterdam School of design. It was an interesting time, 1910-30, and aligned with the arts and crafts movement, similar to art nouveau in France and then moving into Art Deco. Very interesting exhibit. So detailed and elaborate. It's interesting exploring art history and theory at exhibitions and seeing how it influences society and the world. It really is representative of society, tapping into the zeitgeist of a people and place. I particularly appreciated the lighting and clock designs. So cool.
After we wandered through the permanent collection, which was a bit of a crash course in 20th century art. Again, interesting.
After nearly 2hours of wandering the gallery we headed next door to the Van Gogh museum. It again is an interesting building. The original gallery is a Gerard Rietveld building but it also has a new circular glass and metal entry wing. It's an interesting museum. Much more crowded than the last, I guess he's very well known internationally. Such an interesting artist though. Started at 27 and in the space of 10 years until his tragic death he produced so many works, nearly 1 a day. Freakish. The museum has a good collection of his works. Turns out most of it was passed to his brother Theo when he died, who was an art dealer and his best friend. As is well known, his works became more famous after his death. As such most of his collection remained in the family. Upon his brother Theo's death it passed to Theo's wife and son, the son donating it the gallery which he set up in the 1970s
His paintings are interesting for me because of the colours and his play with colour theory. Such a meticulous and hard working artist.
We head out of the museum and past the multiple museum shops they have here. I find art gallery shops a little exploitative really. Particularly to the legacy of artists. You can get Van Gogh sunflower dog collars and dog coats for crying out loud. Seems a bit rich for an artist who died rather poor and lived a peasant life.
It's been prevalent wherever we've gone though, 'the capitalism of the art world'. Whether it's Picasso dolls, postcards of Kandinsky paintings, Andy Warhol socks, or Joan Miro inspired jewellery, it's all quite worthless rubbish.
We head out into the large green square. There's the European discus championship happening. It's a funny thing to watch, particularly the little remote controlled cars that return the discs back to the throwers.
After a good 4 hours of museums we take a break in the nearby Vondelpark, just a little further south. It's a beautiful open space with meandering streams breaking up the large expanses of green. It's quite busy with people bathing in the lunch time sun. There's lots of cyclists of course as well as a lot of joggers. I comment to sim that the way to spot a tourist in this town is if they are walking as all the locals seem to ride.
We stop for some lunch and a beer in the park. What a great place. Really enjoyed it.
After lunch we wander up into the shopping streets and head up to the central area of town at Dam square. We're doing a free city walking tour and it starts here in front of the old palace and new church (it's old but called the new church).
The tour takes us around many of the inner ring districts of the town and gives a great history to the town. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. Many of the streets we'd already walked, but having things explained further to you allows you to see things with different eyes. The guide also answered a lot of questions we were wondering prior to the tour. One for me was why are so many buildings leaning so far forward to the street. It seemed so common and regular that it couldn't just be coincidental movement. It turns out that it was intentional. Most houses used the top floor as the dry storage area, as Amsterdam was built over the river Amstel, which they damed back in the 12th century and thus the name. All the buildings have a hoist or pulley to lift things up to the top. Even today, this is how you move in or out all your furniture in the Amsterdam houses.
The tour took us into some interesting places that we probably wouldn't have gone, one being the Begijnhof, a small closed garden community based around the church where Beguines, single catholic woman, often widows, live in a community. Here we learned a bit about the persecution of Catholics by the dominant Protestants of the time during the Dutch war with Spain.
We then headed into the Jewish quarter. A very sad part of the history of the town. Jews were a large and much loved part of the city community up until WWII when sadly over 100,000 were deported. That whole part of town went to ruin during and after the war and is now filled with 1970-80s Dutch architectural social housing projects. Quite interest also.
The tour also touched on the more modern and liberal aspects of Amsterdam, such as the red light district, the prevalence of cycling paths and of course the 'coffee shops'. The cycling paths are interesting as they are not a cultural thing. They are an applied thing. In the 1950s the city made the choice and more importantly invested and followed through with creating a bicycle friendly city. The large cycling culture of today is really only 60years old. An interesting lesson in how a city can change with a collective mentality to things.
Similarly the marijuana 'coffee shops'. This isn't really part of Amsterdam culture. It's a new thing, new as in only 50 or so years old. They are really a tool for the government, which seems like a lateral thinking one I must say, to collect high amounts of taxes on these coffee shops which provide a legalised 'soft' drug. The coffee shops ultimately get there money to pay these high taxes from customers, predominantly tourists, who pay for the privilege of getting doped up in public. The government use these high taxes to fight problems with more 'hard' drugs in society like heroin, which was rife in the city with Chinese immigration in 60-70s. Such an interesting liberal society.
Another interesting fact we learned on the tour is the meaning behind the XXX you see around the city. This is to symbolise that you are in Amsterdam, more then 3 X's and you're out of Amsterdam, 5-6 and you're pretty far out of town.
Also of interest for me was the history behind Dutch names. We're told this dates back to Napoleons rule of the Netherlands. Up until then, they used pictograms for streets and didn't commonly have surnames. He made everyone have a street number and choose a last name and as a consequence everyone chose things like where they're from, such as the surname van der Beek, which means from the creek (side note:interesting that Dawsons Creek actor lead actor is James van der Beek), or character traits such as De Groot (the large one) or De Jong ( the young one).
After 2 hours of fascinating facts and indulgences into the history of this gorgeous city we ended back at the Dam Square.
We headed up Nieuwendijk shopping street where we stumbled across a large queue for ice cream. We naturally joined, thinking it must be good. It wasn't good, it was amazing! It's called Banketbakkerij van der Linde, and it's a mix of cold creamy cream and vanilla ice cream. Kind of like a soft serve but so much more tastier than our soft serves. All for €1.10 Awesome
We then strolled the streets of Haarlemeerstratt, the aromas of marijuana smoke becoming more prevalent as the evening kicks in, before making our way down to the wide bridge Torrensluis for an evening drink on the canals. The weather here is a balmy 20 degrees - the hottest it gets here were told so we're enjoying it!
It's now 7pm and we head out for Indonesian food in the 9 streets district. We asked our guide from earlier to suggest some good Dutch places to eat, as I was keen to try some Dutch dishes. She was quite honest in saying Dutch food isn't great, mainly deep fried stuff, however she said a lot of Dutch people eat Indonesian food, due to the former colony links and the spice trade too. We gave it a go and it was great. It was just what we both needed. I think we've been missing the south East Asian food which we eat a lot of back home. I get the sense that Amsterdam is a little like Australia when it comes to food in that it doesn't have a definite cuisine or food identity as such like French, Italian or Spanish.
There's quite a mix of foods here. Like the bizarre amount of Argentinian grill places in Centrum district. We've since read this is purely to cater for tourists, as steak and fries is popular and pretty easy to prepare.
After dinner we head back to the hotel for a well earned rest and to watch the second half of the euros. It's been an epic day of exploring. Another 20km + day of walking. Our feet are not feeling great. Hang in there, only a few more days to go.
Goede nacht
mat + sim
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