Our Money's Worth

To not put too fine a point on it, we paid 125 euros, each, for a five day iAmsterdam card. That means we have to use our cards to ride the transit/enter museums to the tune of 25 Euros a day to break even. Because we are retired people, we take this challenge very, very seriously.

We're doing fine. Today for example, we took a "free" canal tour, and here's a selfie to prove it:

Then we swung by the Botanical Gardens, affording me my first and perhaps only opportunity to compare Amsterdam unfavourably to Edinburgh:

Next stop, the Hermitage Amsterdam, where we saw "Jewels" a collection of over-the-top opulence somehow rescued from the Romanov court. 

And we saw "Outsider Art", the pictorial and sculptural ravings of Willem van Genk (1927-2005), who, if he wasn't a schizophrenic, sure painted and wrote like one.

Then we took in the Hermitage's third major show, Portraiture of the 17th C.

That was enough for one day, but, because it was on the way, we also took a spin through the red light district, just to see what it was like and what all the fuss was about.

I learned that the street lights are in fact painted red (you can see one in the shot above) and the sex workers really do stand in the windows posing suggestively for passers by. Nothing on offer was covered by our iAmsterdam cards.

Note, however, that the afternoon was actually sunny, and that, when you're on holiday, is something money can't buy.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Off-perpendicular canal houses. 

Miniature street cars through
the lens of serious mental illness.