Day 6- Van Gogh

This morning went about as smoothly as we could have hoped, considering we stayed up most of the night celebrating the new year. Our first alarm went off at 9:45, but we weren’t ready to go out for the day until about 11:00. Since we’d missed breakfast, we figured we’d go straight to lunch!

We got on a tram and headed for the middle of the city. After walking a short way, we found a little cheese shop with all Dutch goudas, sheep cheeses, and breads. They had little bowls out for us to taste all the cheeses, but instead of satisfying our cheese cravings, it just made us crave cheese even more. We ordered a cheese plate and a bread with melted gouda and roasted onion.

The cheese plate had a cumin gouda, truffle sheep’s cheese, “old” sheep’s cheese, beer gouda, aged gouda, and and “Old Amsterdam” cheese. Brea didn’t care for the beer gouda, and I wasn’t a fan of the cumin gouda, but we each liked all the rest. So, I had all the beer cheese, and Brea got the cumin one. The board also came with some really good French bread, some jam, and some sweet mustard. It all tasted great. The gouda and onion bread also was very good, but the cheese was a little plain. The bread was great though.

After filling up on bread and cheese, we decided to start our day of museums. We took another tram to the museum district and decided to check out the contemporary art museum, the Stedelijk Museum. We picked this one because we only had about an hour and a half until our scheduled time for the Van Gogh museum. We figured that, even though the Stedelijk is massive and we could spend all day there, we usually can’t handle much more than 90 consecutive minutes of contemporary art anyway. Apparently other people share this sentiment, because when we asked at the information desk about the highlight pieces, the man at the desk told us there’s an entire floor set up just for the highlights. So we focused on that.

We saw a lot of familiar arts here like Pollock, Picasso, and Van Gogh. Here's a small assorted sampling of what we saw.

 I just liked how this cabinet looked. It was in a display but I'm not sure there's much special about it.

We even saw a painting from my favorite artist we visited MoMA in New York, Frank Stella.

We also saw work from a bunch of artists we’d never heard of. A couple of my favorites include a mobile-looking sculpture with a motor that made it jostle around, where the pen attached to one end would draw on a piece of paper. There was a video next to it that showed some of his other sculptures that do a similar sort of thing.

Another sculpture I liked was from a Japanese artist made right after the end of WWII. They were meant to show the dangerous future of technology and radiation. The green one is supposed to be eyeballs growing in a field of fuses.

There was also a rowboat covered in…cylinders.

Next, we made our way to the Van Gogh museum. This is the museum I’ve been most looking forward to, and it didn’t disappoint. I don’t know what it is, but Van Gogh had a way of communicating a lot of emotion through a painting. The pieces were beautiful of course, but my favorite, Starry Night, is being displayed in a MoMA exhibition right now. That said, my second favorite, Self Portrait in Grey Felt Hat, was there. I think we spent 4 hours in the museum. We went through an exhibit showing who Van Gogh’s inspirations were, why he liked painting peasants so much and called himself “the peasant painter,” his obsession with self-portraits as a way to experiment which emotions could be communicated based on colors alone, and his eventual dissent into madness. The stories were captivating, even though I thought they were a little contradictory and maybe embellished what I personally think makes sense.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but since we were there for so long, I was able to go back to my favorite paintings and ask if it was ok to take one or two since everyone was leaving the museum anyway. The Security guard said I could as long as no on was looking at the painting other than me. So, I go a picture of the Self Portrait in Grey Felt Hat,

and one of Sunflowers, my third favorite.

Brea’s favorite was Almond Blossom. I agree with her that it’s a very good one. It’s easily one of the more emotional pieces, given its backstory, and it’s from point in his career where he really seemed to be hitting his stride. But I like the Self Portrait more because the colors and patterns are arranged in a way I really like and I like that his self portraits were mostly experimentation with color and texture, and less about technique or precision.

At the end of the exhibits, the had a section from artists who have been inspired by Van Gogh. One painter, Zeng Fohizhi, has some really cool works that I hope to see more of in future. There was also a temporary exhibition of Dutch painters in Paris. There were some interesting pieces, but we had already been there for so long that the museum was closing as we were just starting the exhibition.

We still managed to see it all, but I wish we had more time because there was some really nice work. Overall, I’d say the Van Gogh Museum is probably my favorite part of the trip so far.

The rest of the night was pretty relaxed. We had a recommendation from our Air B&B host, Jon (pronounced “Yon”) that it was nice to visit the north shore of the river here to see the center of the city from a different angle. There are free ferries here every few minutes, so we walked up to the Centraal Station and got on the first ferry going to the north shore. The trip was nicer than the destination for sure.

There are a few nice buildings to look at, but we decided not to spend much time there and took the first ferry back to get some dinner.

Today we decided to go for Thai food. Chiarto hadn’t had Thai food before, and they have a ton of vegetarian options, so we found a good one on TripAdvisor. The food was ok, but I wasn’t super impressed. The food in Amsterdam is only a small step above Belgium, unfortunately. But we’re here for the museums and sights anyway, not necessarily the food.

Our last stop for the night was a brewery for one last beer before bed. I opted for a Trippel, which wad delicious of course. It was brewed right there in house, and they did a great job on it.

I only wish the US could brew beer like some of the ones we’ve had over the last week. As good as US beer is, there’s still a long way to go. Maybe it would be better if we had monks that brew beer, like they have in Belgium…