Amsterdam: Nou breekt m’n klomp! « Vista la città dalla collina

Amsterdam: Nou breekt m’n klomp!

09Apr08

Hahaha, I’m giggling away in the library because the phrase in the title is one I snitched off of a teach yourself Dutch website which I hope to be making use of this summer (yes, I’m going to attempt to teach myself Dutch. Japanese, too. So what?!). The phrase is an idiom that basically means the same as our “now that takes the cake!” which I chose initially because without a doubt the best place I went to in Amsterdam was a little cake cafe which you will definitely be hearing more about in a few paragraphs. But it turns out, the phrase literally translates to, “now that breaks my little wooden shoe!” hahahahaha, oh my. How I love the Dutch and how I love Amsterdam! It really does…break my little wooden shoe. So much so that I’d just love to live there one day, seriously… everything is clean, beautiful, well designed, and modern and lovely there. Ahh! OK, let’s see the pictures!!!

Friday, 7 March

We took a plane to Eindhoven which is sorta far from Amsterdam. This is the view from the bus arriving in — sadly it was raining! — from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal Station, which you can see here through the blurry rain! You can also see the TRAMS. I love, love, love the trams!

After checking in to my hotel, I walked down the street a little and, since it was Friday, the Rijksmuseum was open late so I decided to go before dinner rather than lamely sit in my hotel room. I AM SO HAPPY I DID THAT. The Rijksmuseum is mostly closed for renovations right now but there is a beautiful wing open with all of the “masterpieces” of the collection. That means, the Vermeers, the Rembrandts, the dollhouses, and all the other wonders. . . It’s amazing. The design of the museum is flawless, the information is incredible, and on Fridays, it was almost empty. I saw the dollhouse of Petronella Oortman, Ruisdaels, and on my way past the Rembrandts and into the Vermeers, there was a room with two happy Dutch musicians playing music. One on a kind of violin — sort of the bones of a violin — and the other on an accordion. They were SO HAPPY, just grinning away, and there were maybe about 20 people in the whole museum (and it’s pretty big and usually packed), and so as I walked into the Vermeer room to see the Little Street, the Blue Letter Reader, the Milkmaid, and the Love Letter for the first time, in a completely empty room, I could watch these paintings almost alone with Dutch music floating in the background. Could such an experience be any more perfect?

Saturday, 8 March

This is one of the streets around where my hotel was, in the Museumplein neighborhood. It was really quiet and all of the buildings had these gorgeous stripes along them. Even though it rained on and off the whole weekend and was pretty cold, when the sun came out the whole city becomes illuminated with a very yellow light. No wonder Vermeers paintings were so beautiful. It seems like every place in the world has a different quality of light and it’s cool how art picks up on that.

Vondelpark is the main park in Amsterdam… It’s kind of like Central Park, I guess. But people live inside there too.

As you can kind of see in this picture!

It’s the Rijksmuseum again! I took a lot of pictures of it…

Because one day I want to go back and work there.

View of the Museumplein tram stops

The “real” entrance to the Rijksmuseum. Amazing!!!

Requisite canal photo

THIS IS THE BEST PLACE IN AMSTERDAM: DE TAART VAN M’N TANTE

This is the most wonderful and amazing place I was in Amsterdam besides the Rijksmuseum. Actually they might be a tie and that is saying something because you, dear blog reader, probably realize by now how much I love art. I don’t know what is better to this day, cakes like I got at this little cake cafe, or Vermeers. It is an extremely tough call. As you can see on every table there is a beautifully decorated gourmet cake.

You sit down at a table (the decorations are so girly and funky — butterfly lamps!) and order off of a menu of millions of different kinds of cakes. If you want to look at it and drool, click here. You can also get coffees and drinks. It’s AMAZING. Amazing! A smidge expensive but so, so worth it, every bite and minute. We literally pushed our way into a table because it was so packed and stood around until someone left. It was so worth it!

This is the cake I got! It’s called “anne-marie” and is a vanilla cake with strawberry frosting, strawberry fondant, and whipped cream with a grape. AMAZING!

You can see I loved this place! … Turns out it is also a bed & breakfast called “CAKE UNDER MY PILLOW” How adorable is that!?!? No question that is where I’m staying the next time I’m in Amsterdam. One of my new life goals is to learn Dutch and move to Amsterdam just so I can work in that shop. I figure I can do Rijksmuseum docent-ing in the morning, work at the cake shop in the evenings…

We also went to the van Gogh (actually pronounced Vahn GhgchhOAHghgchch with a gutteral Dutch sound) Museum after the best 2 hours of my life at the cake shop. It was pretty cool although about to close since we spent so much time eating cake. But it was worth it and we saw the highlights. Van Gogh was a pretty sad man, but his writings are fascinating — he literally writes about EVERYTHING to his brother Theo — his life, his art, his ideas, his philosophies, his feelings. It was refreshing to see all of that information presented since for the Renaissance we have so few direct primary sources from artists themselves.

The famous “Iamsterdam” sign in Museumplein (get it? I-am-…sterdam?)

And the sign, not backwards

Canals in the evening

Amsterdam is incredibly beautiful and so unique … and so different than Italy, which is beautiful in its own way, of course, but very different than the landscape in Holland.

Sunday, 9 March

On Sunday, we went to Den Haag!!! This is the capital of the Netherlands. And it’s where one of the most famous paintings in the world is… AH!

Den Haag was super rainy, but quaint and small and beautiful nonetheless.

On the way to the main square

THE MAURITSHUIS

This museum is kind of like the Frick in NYC, or the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston. It was a palace that was transformed into the state museum. And what a state museum it is . . . Some highlights/my favorites (one day I will try to link some pictures, but in the interest of time, I won’t… although you can Google image search them if you want): Rogier Van Der Weyden’s Lamentation of Christ, Gerard David’s forest scenes, Hans Holbein portraits, lots of Rubens, many Rembrandts, including the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (!), Hoogstraten, Jan Steen’s Doctor’s Visit, Gabriel Metsu, Ter Borch’s Woman Writing a Letter (!), Carl Fabritius’ Goldfinch, and oh, the Vermeers… View of Delft, which is huge and stunning; Diana and Attendants, a strange early painting which, according to my notes in front of it, I seem not to think is a Vermeer… well, who knows, haha. And finally the Girl with a Pearl Earring, which truly is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen in my life. It is hard to believe that a person, a human, made this stunningly incredibly beautiful object with his own hand… There are no words.

(The Mauritshuis from the back)

This is the seat of the government, just near the Mauritshuis

Inside the National History Museum, a cute but forgettable little place, they have dollhouses.

A church square we stumbled upon in Den Haag

Den Haag, like Amsterdam, is a sea of bicycles

That evening, we went to a bizarre restaurant where you eat on beds! So strange. On my way, I had to document how clean and easy to use the trams are. Oh, trams, how I love you.

This is the restaurant — bizarre! Lights changed with every course.

And you ate with your plate on your lap. It was quite an experience.

Monday, 10 March

This is the Westerkerk, near Anne Frank’s House

Canal on the way to Westerkerk

Anne Frank’s house was really sad, but quite affecting. It made me remember how great the diary was. I’m really glad we read it in 8th grade — it’s a great thing to read. The house is set up just as is was when the Franks lived and hid there. It takes you through the whole thing and it’s a really great experience and a wonderful little museum. Really powerful.

Tram in front of the. . . Nieue kerk? I think? (Kerk means church, so this is the New Church. I believe. The above, then, was the West church!)

We didn’t pay to go inside the church, but I snapped some pictures from the waiting area. As you can see, Dutch churches are much less ornate than Italian or French ones. Stark white interiors and very little decoration.

The Olde Kerk is aaalmost right inside the Red Light District. . . an interesting, I believe accidental, placement…

The Olde Kerk was a little under construction, with a dusty smell and lots of beams on the floor and things closed off, and almost totally quiet except for the echo of people’s footsteps. (Whereas the Nieue kerk had a ticket stand, an art exhibition inside, and a murmur of voices throughout.)

Then we trekked up to REMBRANDT’S HOUSE!! Okay, it was a liiittle silly since they just kind of remade it all to look like it did when Rembrandt lived there, but who doesn’t love Rembrandt?! I mean, look at that face. (Yes that is a blowup picture of his own self portrait print, which is actually only the size of a postage stamp, and if you ever visit me at Vassar, I will gladly show it to you.) I loved Rembrandt’s house. It was a quick museum but really cute.

I feel the need to note that we went to a little cafe/eatery (Dutch equivalent of a trattoria, I suppose?) for lunch near the Rembrandt house. It was SO good! I got a hazelnut latte (because I am addicted to coffee), and a goat cheese, honey, pear, and walnut sandwich. I had not had goat cheese in months and it is one of my favorite foods, so this was exciting, and thus merits its own paragraph. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of the wonderful creation…

We took a walk down the Golden Mile (or something?) which is the rich part of town and has oodles of examples of traditional Dutch architecture.

This poor house is tilting…

Walking up back to the Museumplein

This is right across the street from the main, huge entrance to the Rijksmuseum. I don’t know what it is aside from my future house, when I win the lottery and buy this gorgeous mansion so I can go to the Rijksmuseum every day and have a lunch break at the cake shop.