Rijsttafel, Van Gogh Museum, Canal Tour, Tulip Museum, Pulitzer Garden

 

We’ve been busy!  Last night Claudia and I went to Restaurant Blauw for Indonesian rijsttafel.  We were amazed!  It was so good — 15 dishes, all levels of spice, sauces that ranged from peanut satay to sweetness to savoriness and flavors I couldn’t identify, served with rice and pickled vegetables.  It was so much fun to try everything and they let us stay at the table into the next seating so we could really savor the experience. 

In addition to the endless rows of bicycles that are used by Amsterdam’s commuters, there are bikes decorated flowers many places.  We couldn’t resist taking a photo (or two or three…).

We had timed tickets this morning for the Van Gogh museum, but our excitement at seeing no line in front of the museum didn’t last.  There was no line because everyone who could possibly want to be at the museum was inside already.  There were some highlights — paintings I hadn’t seen before — but the overall crowd, dim lighting and audio-tour traffic jams were a problem.  At one barely visible work of art, the wall card noted the success they’d had removing a yellowed varnish that had been applied after Van Gogh died… but there was no way to tell in the dim light.  I know this is an ongoing situation in museums as they grapple with preservation of the work and the damaging effects of light, but it’s a bit discouraging.  Oh well.    I did love this painting of apples (taken without a flash in a relatively well lit corridor).

We took a break after the museum to get sandwiches at Cora, which was recommended and I pass along the recommendation to you.  Fantastic sandwiches which we enjoyed in our room while we rested our feet.

It was really really windy today and very cold when the wind blew, so our plan to take an “open” canal boat tour turned into a boat tour with closed windows to look through.  The Flagship tour (recommended by our hotel) started near the Anne Frank museum and made a loop along the canals past many houseboats to the Amster river (which gave the city its name) and back again.  Many fun facts from the tour — 18,000 bicycles end up in the canals each year, many of which have been thrown in the water.  A number in the hundreds of people who end up falling in the canals, 3 of whom were dead last year.  And a few hundred cars that end up in the canals due to bad parking jobs and lack of guardrails.  One thing in particular surprised me: I assumed that Amsterdam had evolved like Venice, where the canals connect islands that existed in the lagoon.  In Amsterdam, the canals were all hand dug to bring water and goods from the Amster River inland, and, by heaping the dug out soil, created the cities streets. I hope to learn more about this when we take a history tour on Thursday. Oh, and another fun thing, which Claudia and I had guessed at and was verified on the tour — most buildings in Amsterdam have extended hooks at the top floor, which are used (even today!) with a pulley system to bring anything large like furniture up through the windows and into the house.  We experienced a lot of tiny corkscrew staircases in just our little travel so far and the hooks are definitely necessary.

Behind the Anne Frank house, we found this monument to acknowledge discrimination against and oppression of LGBTQ people, which was made of pink granite in triangles going down to the nearby canal.  There were also large pink granite triangles in the nearby plaza.  It was a moving visual to accompany the tragic history of Nazi anti-semitism and bring awareness of the ongoing issue that exists today.

 

The Amsterdam Tulip museum wins my award for museum design.  In this tiny museum behind a shop selling bulbs and beautiful tulip-themed gifts, the story of Tulipmania is told using 3-D displays, interactive maps, videos and a beautiful wood sculpture diorama illustrating the worlds where tulips grow. This was my consolation for missing out on a 2020 trip to the tulip fields and it was lovely but only made me want, even more, to someday make that trip.  Although I am a gardener and have read much about the tulip trade, the visual of tulips in full flower being shorn of the petals 10 days after blooming to force growth to the bulb was pretty crazy.

We ended our busy day in the “garden” at the Pulitzer hotel, where we had cocktails and snacks.  The charming and sincere bartender told us how their cocktails are hand-crafted, none take fewer than 3 days to make.  We had pumpkin and talllegio on toast, frites, and a duck confit ravioli in blood orange sauce with drinks.