Getting the Gist

Bruce at the MOCO - not Banksy, not Koons, but just as cool.

We like to get the flavour of a place when we travel. That's why we like to wander around rather than ride the transit. And why we try to find a balance between the touristy parts of town and all the other parts.

That said, after we got our iAmsterdam cards this morning, we took a direct route to the Rijksmuseum because I was going to see those Rembrandts and Vermeers, dammit.

And I wasn't disappointed. 

Art History Major Dream Come True: Detail from The Night Watch by Rembrandt

The reason we are travelling in February is to avoid some of the worst of the crowds. This appears to have worked. The crowds in the Rijksmuseum were small and well-behaved. Better than the AGO on a Sunday afternoon. 

The Rijksmuseum is an amazing collection, showing on a scale I had never imagined the wealth of the region in its mercantilist heyday; it makes the Scottish Renaissance look like a yard sale.

Outside the grand museum, the city impressed us in other ways:

Toronto tells you to keep your dog off of gardens and boulevards and yards. Amsterdam shows you where your dog can go.

Cultural appropriation looks different in A'dam.

Bike parking by the central train station.

We had heard about the bikes. We had seen pictures of the bikes, but nothing really prepared us for the ubiquity, intensity and sheer number of bikes.

We had heard about the cannabis shops but nothing really prepared us for their ubiquity. The sign below provides a guide to the intensity.

Every once in a while, our tendency to just wander brings us in the vicinity of a touristy spot, which is how we ended up in the Flower Market.

And, after three hours in the Rijksmuseum, we were hungry enough to risk some local cuisine again. This time it was pea soup (a local mainstay) and fries (just because) at the Cobra Cafe right outside the Rijksmuseum. If you go to Amsterdam and decide to try this, don't bother to order the fries. The pea soup is delicious and all you need.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Banksy at the MOCO.

Also at the Flower Market.

Self portrait with bourgeois porcelain overkill.