We woke up early on our second day in Amsterdam to have a quick breakfast in our hotel room and walk over to the Rijksmuseum, which is about 10 minutes away.
We started with a special exhibit, Point of View, that looked at gender norms in Dutch artwork including the clothing that distinguished boys from girls and men from women, as well as the furniture, musical instruments and other constructs that society has used to label and define humans through history. It was super interesting. One of my favourite quotes in the exhibit is by Ru Paul: “We’re all born naked. And the rest is drag.”
Then we headed to the main gallery of old masters including several paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt and the highlight, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Even behind glass and dozens of tourists, The Night Watch is giant and impressive. And we had to walk by it several times to access the stairs on either side of the museum to get to the next floors. So we kind of felt like it became part of the background of our visit.
We walked through room after room of masterpieces, many depicting military campaigns, landscapes, portraits and still lifes. There are also epic sculptures in marble and wood, and pieces of furniture with incredible inlays and decorations.
One of my favourites is a series of massive ink drawings on canvas of naval battles by Willem van de Velde I including The Battle of Dunkirk. And I loved peeking into the museum’s art historical library with four floors of books dedicated to its artists and artworks. Libraries make me so happy.
Lastly we visited the modern art rooms where we absolutely fell in love with works by Tomoko Nagai and Kees de Goede.
After five hours we were exhausted and had some lunch from a sandwich stand in the green space behind the museum before heading back to our hotel for a rest. We were back out a couple of hours later for dinner at Pho 91, where we all had absolutely gorgeous vegan pho.
Rowan had his now favourite local apple juice, while Kevin and I had Amsterdam style teas – huge slices of fresh ginger steeped in hot water for Kevin, and a handful of mint leaves in hot water for me.
We tried to make it an early night back at the hotel, but stayed up late lounging, blogging and reading…
Leave a Reply