November 21st, 2023
After breakfast we set out for another major museum, the Hermitage. Located on the bank of the Amstel River, one of the city’s natural major arteries, the morning fog obscured the building’s name and nature, which only partially revealed itself in the course our visit.
Through a basement stairway we entered the old industrial brick compound into a sleek new interior occupied by independent galleries surrounding courtyards and gardens and found the Rembrandt and Contemporaries exhibition visiting from New York. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 13th, 2023
Amsterdam is known as a city of museums, containing 75 of varying scope and size. We were interested enough to purchase IAmsterdam cards in advance providing free entry and reservations, remembering the summer’s tourist invasion. Our conservative preference for Rembrandt and other early modern Dutch and Flemish masters led us to the Rijksmuseum during the first morning. It wasn’t surprising to see the rainbow flag displayed over the entrance as it was everywhere else celebrating the upcoming climax of this year’s Pride Week (or month).
The building itself, another late nineteenth century combination of Gothic and Renaissance Revival style, opened onto a grand plaza and park, unlike the other compressed spaces of the city, where only the waterways offered open vistas.
On the way to the Rembrandt galleries, I relished the raunchy canvases celebrating peasant delights in drinking and sex Read the rest of this entry »
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November 12th, 2023
August 2 turned out to be a welcome transition day after the intensity of the two previous ones. We had planned to spend it in nearby Metz with a person whom we’d last seen 37 years ago, the best friend of our son in grade 4 while we lived in Claremont CA. After reading a recent autobiography by his mom, we’d connected by email and learned that he’d moved to France and lived on an off-grid organic farm with his wife and two children. We were eager to see each other, but shortly before the planned visit an unfortunate circumstance required its cancellation.
After a slow morning we arrived by train in Metz stayed in the least expensive hotel near the railroad station we could find, and next day continued on getting a taste of local transport by switching trains in Luxemborg and Brussels.
We arrived late in the afternoon at our destination, another vast nineteenth century monument to the railroad, Amsterdam Central Station.
Crossing the bridge over the wide canal crowded with boat traffic that fronted it, we found the hotel that Jan had selected online, a small-scale tribute to the rail transportation system that continued to thrill me. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 6th, 2023
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