Amsterdam Day 2: Rijksmuseum and . . . Walking
I had mapped out my day's itinerary via tram and bus with the help of the kind gentleman who switched me into a nicer room the night before. He flirted with me while we talked and tried to give me the best advice on how to get to my destinations. As I left the hotel, when I began to think about how I walked the city on Tuesday, it occurred to me that things are a lot closer to each other than I realized, and that if I walked, I'd see more of the city and really be able to absorb it. I headed out after breakfast. My plan was to walk past the place where John Adams lived when he was in Amsterdam, and to check out the comics shop that had been recommended to me, and then to head to the Rijksmuseum.
And I had a nice walk. The weather was good, the city was beautiful, I took a lot of pictures. I ambled. I found the site of Adams' home and, consequently, America's first embassy in Holland marked with a plaque placed there by the John Adams Foundation. I found the comics shop, though it wasn't open yet. And I found an amazing antiques shop that had an entire window crammed full to the ceiling of beautiful Delftware, a piece of which I'd hoped to take home. (All of their windows were extraordinary displays. It was like looking at a treasure warehouse: a whole theme window full of pipes and pipe paraphernalia; a whole window of glass vessels--vases, glasses, pitchers, filled about halfway with blue liquid to make each individual item stand out; and the Delftware presented and displayed one next to the other on shelf after shelf and hung on the walls. Their merchandising was genius.) It wasn't open yet either, so I proceeded to the museum . . . where I discovered, to my dismay, that I'd left my wallet in the room.
I hoofed it back to the hotel, got my wallet--and this time, I took the tram back to the museum.
The Rijksmuseum
2012 is apparently the year that many of the museums in Amsterdam are renovating, because a large portion of the Rijksmuseum wasn't open. I knew this would be the case; I'd done my homework. But the museum had set itself up such that you could still see highlights on an abbreviated tour. I got the museum map with the tour laid out, and the audio guide for the exhibits as they were available. I was given a choice of two: the art tour or the history tour. I took the art tour, which emphasized the artists in their times, their techniques, and their subjects. It was an excellent choice.
Due to the tightness of security in the museum, I ended up having to check my bag and forgot to take my notebook with me. What this means is that I'm left with mostly impressions. I rarely take photographs in museums; no picture I might take will be any more accurate to the experience of a piece of art than any professional reproduction and, as I learned more authentically than ever before on this trip, no reproduction will ever match the experience of seeing an original. But here are the impressions I was left with:
The Rembrandts blew me away. I remember learning about his work in junior high school in the advanced art classes I took, all of which included some pretty detailed art history study. As I listened to the audio tour and looked at these paintings, I remembered those lectures and found myself looking at the paintings in more detail, stepping closer, stepping away. It's a wonder what he did with his portraits and images, how he used light, where he got into the fine detail of a face and where he went soft with details to bring out what was most and least important in a picture.
I saw The Night Watch with its many different faces and its inherent action and movement. It's much lighter than I expected, the result of cleaning and care. The darkness of the painting was purely the result of the accumulation of dirt and soot on the surface. I saw The Jewish Bride with its beautiful gestures and the softest suggestions of affection and intimacy. I saw The Syndics, and the look of interrupted work about each man's face and gesture, their surprise, and their focus. I got to examine the techniques Rembrandt used in the smaller paintings on display, how he layered his paints and would use the other end of his brush to scratch away applied paint to create detail. It was astonishing stuff.
The Vermeers were beautiful, too, an entirely different experience and, somehow, not quite as personal for me. That's not to suggest they weren't astonishing--just different. The Kitchen Maid is beautiful and intimate. The bread in the basket on the table looks like you could reach into the painting and tear off a hunk. The light on her skin gives it a luminous quality, and just looking you know that she's got a gorgeous complexion, fair but almost ruddy in the sunlight. The Love Letter is almost like a panel out of a comic book in its immediacy and familiarity of action: the look on each woman's face is so expressive--you can tell exactly what each one is thinking.
There was also a whole room of blue-and-white Delftware explaining its origins and history: dishes and tiered vases and spice jars, amazing sets of tiles that created intricate tableaus of flowers and birds and cherubs--just lovely things.
Other stops covered Holland's golden age, displaying paintings of key figures and explaining how people lived. There was an exhibit of magnificent doll houses--not toys, but the pet projects of rich women who would spend a fortune outfitting a doll house in exact scale to her own home using the finest materials available and, consequently, costing a fortune to create. And there was so much more.
It was an amazing morning seeing these works that I thought I knew from reproductions but that I knew not at all.
An afternoon's perambulation
After a stop for lunch, I strolled back to the antiques store with the Delftware, and what I discovered was that even the most modest pieces, things smaller than a candy dish or simple tiles hand painted with a single figure, cost nearly 100 Euros. I couldn't justify the cost no matter how much I liked a piece and so, after much perusal and consideration, I walked away. I regret it only a little bit. The last thing I need in my house is yet another thing to dust, no matter how rare or beautiful. Still, I'll think of that place until I can get back there again somehow. If it had been earlier in the trip or if I'd been less tired my experience and willingness to shop might have been very different.
My plan at this point was to spend the later part of the day making my way to the Amsterdam Hermitage. My information said that it was open until 8 PM on Wednesdays, so I slow-poked it, strolling through the Flower Market--which didn't really impress me; it reminded me of Pike Place Market in all the worst ways. Yes, you could buy tulip bulbs there, but the place was clearly a tourist trap--crappy souvenirs at every turn. I made a couple of other stops, and walked through Rembrandtplain and saw the great man's statue there. I finally got to the Hermitage around 4:45 only to discover that, despite my best research, the museum didn't, in fact, stay open late on Wednesday evenings. I was disappointed and slightly frustrated given the way the day began. I immediately asked what time the museum opened on Thursday--9 AM--and made a plan to be back when the doors opened.
At this point, I was exhausted. Because I was tired, I didn't really think through my situation. The smart thing would have been to ask where the nearest tram station was and to figure out how to get back to the hotel. But I was hypoglycemic, on autopilot, and started walking, got lost, walked too far in the wrong direction, and then finally prevailed on a local to look at a map with me and help reorient me. She was kind and helpful, and I did finally make it back to the hotel.
My caretaker
I should note, at this point, that I seemed to have made a conquest without realizing it. The older man who worked at the hotel and who had so kindly given me a nicer room the night before and directions in the morning was at the desk when I returned. He greeted me when I came up, calling me Beautiful Lady (which is what he called me the rest of the time I was there) and asked me how my day was, and then tried very sweetly to suggest that he could send my baggage back to Seattle and would happily keep me in Amsterdam. He was so charming I couldn't help but smile. After resting up a bit, I went out for a little dinner, came back and read until bed time.
And I had a nice walk. The weather was good, the city was beautiful, I took a lot of pictures. I ambled. I found the site of Adams' home and, consequently, America's first embassy in Holland marked with a plaque placed there by the John Adams Foundation. I found the comics shop, though it wasn't open yet. And I found an amazing antiques shop that had an entire window crammed full to the ceiling of beautiful Delftware, a piece of which I'd hoped to take home. (All of their windows were extraordinary displays. It was like looking at a treasure warehouse: a whole theme window full of pipes and pipe paraphernalia; a whole window of glass vessels--vases, glasses, pitchers, filled about halfway with blue liquid to make each individual item stand out; and the Delftware presented and displayed one next to the other on shelf after shelf and hung on the walls. Their merchandising was genius.) It wasn't open yet either, so I proceeded to the museum . . . where I discovered, to my dismay, that I'd left my wallet in the room.
I hoofed it back to the hotel, got my wallet--and this time, I took the tram back to the museum.
The Rijksmuseum
2012 is apparently the year that many of the museums in Amsterdam are renovating, because a large portion of the Rijksmuseum wasn't open. I knew this would be the case; I'd done my homework. But the museum had set itself up such that you could still see highlights on an abbreviated tour. I got the museum map with the tour laid out, and the audio guide for the exhibits as they were available. I was given a choice of two: the art tour or the history tour. I took the art tour, which emphasized the artists in their times, their techniques, and their subjects. It was an excellent choice.
Due to the tightness of security in the museum, I ended up having to check my bag and forgot to take my notebook with me. What this means is that I'm left with mostly impressions. I rarely take photographs in museums; no picture I might take will be any more accurate to the experience of a piece of art than any professional reproduction and, as I learned more authentically than ever before on this trip, no reproduction will ever match the experience of seeing an original. But here are the impressions I was left with:
The Rembrandts blew me away. I remember learning about his work in junior high school in the advanced art classes I took, all of which included some pretty detailed art history study. As I listened to the audio tour and looked at these paintings, I remembered those lectures and found myself looking at the paintings in more detail, stepping closer, stepping away. It's a wonder what he did with his portraits and images, how he used light, where he got into the fine detail of a face and where he went soft with details to bring out what was most and least important in a picture.
I saw The Night Watch with its many different faces and its inherent action and movement. It's much lighter than I expected, the result of cleaning and care. The darkness of the painting was purely the result of the accumulation of dirt and soot on the surface. I saw The Jewish Bride with its beautiful gestures and the softest suggestions of affection and intimacy. I saw The Syndics, and the look of interrupted work about each man's face and gesture, their surprise, and their focus. I got to examine the techniques Rembrandt used in the smaller paintings on display, how he layered his paints and would use the other end of his brush to scratch away applied paint to create detail. It was astonishing stuff.
The Vermeers were beautiful, too, an entirely different experience and, somehow, not quite as personal for me. That's not to suggest they weren't astonishing--just different. The Kitchen Maid is beautiful and intimate. The bread in the basket on the table looks like you could reach into the painting and tear off a hunk. The light on her skin gives it a luminous quality, and just looking you know that she's got a gorgeous complexion, fair but almost ruddy in the sunlight. The Love Letter is almost like a panel out of a comic book in its immediacy and familiarity of action: the look on each woman's face is so expressive--you can tell exactly what each one is thinking.
There was also a whole room of blue-and-white Delftware explaining its origins and history: dishes and tiered vases and spice jars, amazing sets of tiles that created intricate tableaus of flowers and birds and cherubs--just lovely things.
Other stops covered Holland's golden age, displaying paintings of key figures and explaining how people lived. There was an exhibit of magnificent doll houses--not toys, but the pet projects of rich women who would spend a fortune outfitting a doll house in exact scale to her own home using the finest materials available and, consequently, costing a fortune to create. And there was so much more.
It was an amazing morning seeing these works that I thought I knew from reproductions but that I knew not at all.
An afternoon's perambulation
After a stop for lunch, I strolled back to the antiques store with the Delftware, and what I discovered was that even the most modest pieces, things smaller than a candy dish or simple tiles hand painted with a single figure, cost nearly 100 Euros. I couldn't justify the cost no matter how much I liked a piece and so, after much perusal and consideration, I walked away. I regret it only a little bit. The last thing I need in my house is yet another thing to dust, no matter how rare or beautiful. Still, I'll think of that place until I can get back there again somehow. If it had been earlier in the trip or if I'd been less tired my experience and willingness to shop might have been very different.
My plan at this point was to spend the later part of the day making my way to the Amsterdam Hermitage. My information said that it was open until 8 PM on Wednesdays, so I slow-poked it, strolling through the Flower Market--which didn't really impress me; it reminded me of Pike Place Market in all the worst ways. Yes, you could buy tulip bulbs there, but the place was clearly a tourist trap--crappy souvenirs at every turn. I made a couple of other stops, and walked through Rembrandtplain and saw the great man's statue there. I finally got to the Hermitage around 4:45 only to discover that, despite my best research, the museum didn't, in fact, stay open late on Wednesday evenings. I was disappointed and slightly frustrated given the way the day began. I immediately asked what time the museum opened on Thursday--9 AM--and made a plan to be back when the doors opened.
At this point, I was exhausted. Because I was tired, I didn't really think through my situation. The smart thing would have been to ask where the nearest tram station was and to figure out how to get back to the hotel. But I was hypoglycemic, on autopilot, and started walking, got lost, walked too far in the wrong direction, and then finally prevailed on a local to look at a map with me and help reorient me. She was kind and helpful, and I did finally make it back to the hotel.
My caretaker
I should note, at this point, that I seemed to have made a conquest without realizing it. The older man who worked at the hotel and who had so kindly given me a nicer room the night before and directions in the morning was at the desk when I returned. He greeted me when I came up, calling me Beautiful Lady (which is what he called me the rest of the time I was there) and asked me how my day was, and then tried very sweetly to suggest that he could send my baggage back to Seattle and would happily keep me in Amsterdam. He was so charming I couldn't help but smile. After resting up a bit, I went out for a little dinner, came back and read until bed time.