Amsterdam

August 23, 2009, Sunday
Amsterdam

Today we did museums and I feel so cultured I’m practically yogurt!! First we did the Rembrandt Museum and I was really fascinated by the fact that not all of his work was dark, drab ugly people! I’ve just always thought of him as being really dark and depressing but much of the work here is light and uplifting. I made the usual arrangement with Don that I’d go at my pace and he could go at his pace and I’d wait for him at the end, however, after I had done 4 rooms, I went back looking for him and he was barely inside room one, so I gave him the word that I would wait for him but not all day long!!! Next thing I knew he had almost caught up with me!! I really didn’t have to wait long for him at all!

Next we decided to do a city tour on the hop on hop off bus. It wasn’t around last year and we found out that it didn’t have the hop on hop off license yet so once you got on you were on until you got back at the beginning. That was fine with us and so we went for a nice little ride and saw the whole city. We were both really surprised at how small Amsterdam really is.

After the bus ride we decided to visit the diamond museum but that was a joke and was mostly a tour of a few guys polishing diamonds and then a sales pitch and .the “opportunity” to buy diamonds at seriously inflated prices. At the very end of the tour they were selling Swarovski stuff and I was amused that they were pushing anything that sparkled---from $65,000 diamonds to $300 cut glass!! I guess the $30 sparkly tee shirts were outside the door!

Then we were hungry and we got a warm waffle sprinkled with powdered sugar. How decadent!! And delicious!! Fully restored, we were off to the VanGogh Museum and we cruised through there. It is a very modern and light museum and is the most popular and most visited museum in Amsterdam. It was packed today but people were generally pleasant and didn’t push or shove and you could see everything you wished to see.

So then the day was pretty well gone and we were both pooped so we crawled back to our hotel and now we are trying to figure out how to have food brought in!! LOL I just do NOT feel like walking any further today but that isn’t an option so we will rest for a while and then truck off to a local restaurant to find some food.

Once again we have had wonderful weather. How long can all this goodness last????
.