Museum District Day!

The entire museum district was beautiful

The Rijksmuseum looked more like a castle than a museum! 

The famous Iamsterdam sign! 

    Greetings again from Dutchies Hostel here in Amsterdam! I still have to remind myself that I’m really here, in Europe for the first time. Today I’d dedicated to hitting up the museum district here- I’d already booked tickets online to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum. After walking to a grocery store that’s literally across the street from my hostel and picking up breakfast there, I headed out to catch the tram to the museum district. By the way, I always love visiting and exploring grocery stores in new places; it’s just a really fun and interesting cultural experience.

            Thankfully the public transportation here in Amsterdam is really easy and helpful. The trams run very frequently, make stops all over town, and have pickup points that are very well marked. I arrived at the museum district at about ten. The weather was so beautiful this morning! The sun was warm but the air was cool and breezy. I hit up the Van Gogh Museum first and spent the rest of the morning there exploring. They asked us not to take pictures in the museum, so readers are going to have to take my word that this place was very beautiful and interesting. It did a great job of breaking down the different types of things that Van Gogh liked to paint, from peasant homes and families to self-portraits to natural landscapes. He really only worked as an artist for ten years, beginning in 1880 and ending with his suicide in 1890 at the age of only 37. In that time he created hundreds of beautiful paintings and drawings, many of which were there at the museum. The collection also included hundreds of the letters that he wrote to his brother Theo, who also seemed to be his best friend and confidant, and was a big part of getting his artwork into the public eye. In fact it was Theo’s son, Vincent’s nephew that started the Van Gogh Foundation after they were both dead. The foundation opened up the Van Gogh Museum in 1973.

            Looking at all of the work he did, it was crazy to think that he only lived to be 37. He did a lot of paintings of poor peasants and farmers because he seemed to feel a connection to them. Some were portraits, some were them depicted in a field or standing outside their homes, and several paintings showed a peasant family sitting around a table eating. We also saw his landscape pictures that he focused on during the last few years of his life. There’s a painting that shows a yellow grain field with dark, stormy clouds above it and a group of black birds flying over it. The painting has a very dark feel to it and is believed to be the last painting he completed before his death.

            After my morning there I walked out to find a place to have lunch. While walking around I was again reminded of why I love solo travel. Don’t get me wrong, traveling with friends or family is great too, but there’s something just so freeing about traveling solo. It means I can just walk along random streets of Amsterdam without having to ask someone else what they’d like to eat or which direction we should walk. There’s something really nice about only having myself to worry about.

            Just a few blocks off the museum district I stopped into a restaurant and had some of the most delicious fried fish I’d ever eaten. Even the tartar sauce was amazing! One thing I’ve learned in my time traveling abroad is that America does condiments all wrong. I’ll never again be able to enjoy the stuff we call mayonnaise in America.

            In the afternoon I headed to the Rijksmuseum. It’s in such a beautiful building; it looks almost like a palace or castle! And right out front of it is the famous Iamsterdam sign, which I snapped some pictures of before heading inside. We were allowed to take pictures in the Rijksmuseum, and I definitely took advantage of that opportunity! This museum had a lot of different eras and styles of artwork. Like Van Gogh, the painter Rembrandt was also from the Netherlands and I saw several of his paintings in there!

            When I came out of the museum, I stopped and sat under one of the trees in the park area in the front of the museum district and enjoyed the beautiful weather and wonderful place I was in. By that time it was probably close to four, so I headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit. It’s raining here in Amsterdam this evening, but that doesn’t make the city any less beautiful. My bed in this hostel is right by the window, and I’m looking out at the rain and listening to it fall against the window. I’m definitely not used to being this far north- last night it didn’t get dark until after ten o’clock and this morning I woke up to see what looked like midmorning sun coming in. I pulled out my phone, hoping I didn’t sleep through my alarm, only to see that it was 5:30 am. Weird!

            Tomorrow is my last day here in Amsterdam. I have a few ideas of things to do, put I’m also going to just do some more walking around the city with my camera and enjoying the feeling of being here. Then Thursday morning it’s on to Cape Town! This post’s food for thought is a quote that I just discovered, and that I understand so much! “I am never happier than when I am alone in a foreign city; it is as if I had become invisible.”- Storm Jameson