Day 4 - "The Culturing"
Today was our last day in Amsterdam (except for the very final day of our trip). Jessi is feeling better! We're not all the way out of the woods yet, but we're solidly on the way. Thanks everyone for your concerns! Jessi sends love to all!
We woke up this morning with Jessi feeling better, and we went to the cafe, which is attached to our hotel. We are staying in a fashion boutique hotel. All of the rooms in this hotel are unique and they are each an artistic representation of fashion in almost every aspect of the room's design or decoration. Our room is called "Infusion" and it is lined floor to ceiling and wall to wall with a fabric design of a black and white dream-scape. Hanging bare-bulb lights swing over the bed and the designs on the fabric are evocative of mountainous Japanese landscapes on a kimono. This hotel also features a Marie Antoinette Room, decorated in period furniture with a giant bodice hanging over the bed. There is another room that celebrates the frill-collar (like the ones you see in 17th century paintings). It has a mechanical 3D collar that runs over the bed. Another room sports 80's fashion with a tight rainbow skirt running around the whole room.
That brings us back to the cafe...
The cafe is cool because its walls are decorated with birds holding/wearing fashion items. The birds were drawn by EVERYONE who had a stake in the restaurant. We're talking about the owners, employees, financiers, construction workers, electricians, cleaning staff, etc. ALL of the people involved in constructing, maintaining, or staffing this establishment drew birds for the walls of the cafe. It's pretty cool!
We set off from the Damrak this morning and hopped a tram to the Rijksmuseum. HOLY MOLEY, you guys! The Rijksmuseum was spectacular. We OWNED that museum. If it hung, sat, or hovered there....we saw it...and I probably read the sign for it. Jessi was endlessly frustrated with my need to see EVERYTHING! lol
The Rijksmuseum is the imperial museum of the Netherlands. It contains art exhibitions, which are national treasures to the Netherlands. The museum was the crowning jewel of our time in Amsterdam. There were so many amazing things to see in the museum. It was separated into time periods: 1100-1600, 1600-1650, 1650-1700, 1700-1800, 1800-1900. There was waay too much to talk about in one blog post. I can point out just a few things.
1. Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" and all of the paintings surrounding it are insanely amazing. The symbolism and realism of these paintings in-person is unimaginable. The faces of the men in these paintings jump out at you. They watch you as you approach them. They watch you as you walk away. They seem to move on the canvas, like in Harry Potter. Before you ask...NO, Jessi and I have NOT been visiting "disreputable shops" in the city, and NO we have not otherwise been influenced by any illicit substances.
2. Van Gogh's self portrait is a jewel of the museum. It is small, and people crowd around it like for the Mona Lisa in Paris. I've seen reproductions of the work many times, but seeing the actual thing in-person is something else. You are literally in the room, looking at the thing that the man actually touched. Van Gogh's self portraiture was practice for his other paintings. At the time of the painting of the portrait that we saw, he had all of his teeth pulled and his face, according to his brother, would be unrecognizable to his mother.
3. Medieval art is almost all religious...BUT the age of the materials displayed and their history is astounding. There were paintings from the medieval period, which hung in churches or in homes, over altars, or in chapels. The interpretation these Christian men provide of their Jesus figure and his followers (jews from what we call the Levant) is almost comically senseless. I believe it gives you a unique insight into their world and their method of thought. The world was much much "larger" in those days. There was no instantaneous, widely available media from around the world to show these men who anyone else out there in the world was. Maybe I'm projecting a bit here, but I imagine that in their limited worldview, they supposed everyone just looked and acted the same. Or was it something more sinister? Were their paintings and depictions propaganda tools for the European way of life and for the rest of the world to promote an image of their religious figures as white men? Anyway these things were REALLY OLD and there were cool swords and shields and armor and stuff too....so there ya go, kiddies. Chew on all that.
3. Jessi really liked the library. There is a 3 story library in the Rijksmuseum. It is one of the the repositories of knowledge for the people of the Netherlands in an earlier age. The library is lit by huge windows perched at the top of the steeped ceiling, and light pours down in near liquid-gleam over the books and tables below. A spiral staircase leads between the floors, and each floor is adorned with old placards with the names of old and famous publishers of books. It seems that the people are still able to come and sit in the library and use their laptops at least. I'm not so sure of whether they can read the actual books. The place smells heavenly. The whole room smells like old books. You know the smell...it's that smell of really old pages slowly losing their battle with time as hundreds of years go by. Behind us sat a large case of medallions, which were given to citizens of towns, who helped with flooding efforts over the ages. They are called Flood Medallions. The Netherlands is a country that would, to a larger degree, be under water. The Dutch are master engineers and reclaimed much of their land in cities and towns from bodies of water. Sometimes they flood. When the cities/towns do flood, people do great acts for the public good, and when that happens, those people deserve a medallion to commemorate that! Good on ya, historic Netherlands!
4. Small wonders Exhibit: Have you ever heard of a prayer nut? No, not Great Aunt Beatrice, who goes to church waaaay to often. Or that creepily polite lady from down the block who always says "I'll pray for you." I'm talking about an ACTUAL object called a prayer nut.. It appears to be a dutch invention, and if you were a richy-rich moneybags from the 1600's YOU TOO could have a prayer nut, because they were the bees-knees of well-to-do must-have devotional technology at the time. What are they? They are tiny...I mean TINY...wooden creations, which resemble an EXTREMELY intricately carved and decorated nut. When you open this "nut" you reveal a whole world of tiny intricacies. Extremely tiny scenes are carved into the interior of these small objects. There are sneaky wooden doors and flaps inside them that fold out to reveal even more layers of detail and intricacy. Common scenes from these are scenes from the life of the Christian Jesus figure. Everytime you look at one, you see another new detail and wonder..."How the hell did they do that in 16-whatever the hell?!" There were also small coffins carved in the same style as well as a larger story scene carved of St. George slaying the mythical dragon. Just check out the pics in the carousel below...no description I can give will do them any justice.
5. The Asian Pavilion: have you ever stood in the presence of an actual depiction of a god from India? Have you ever gazed upon life-sized monks, in intricate statue form, such that if you looked at the statue in your periphery, you'd think it was actually a person doing a "live-art" exhibit? Yeah...that was this place! Jessi's favorite pieces in the museum were two large Japanese Temple guardians. In stark contrast to the Tiny Wonders exhibition, these things were MASSIVE. They looked like two guys who were not going to take any guff from anybody. Holding ceremonial weapons to fend off ignorance, these two giant muscly and jeering guardians, stole the show of the Asian Pavilion, casting a large shadow over a field of ancient Chinese and Japanese artifacts. They seem to be looking down at you as the motion. One points down authoritatively, while the other holds his hand up with such force that I seriously stopped walking when I saw him.
6. The ships....I have not even gotten to the ships yet. The museum has a massive number of ship models that are made to-scale, by actual ship builders. They sit in giant fleets in the special collections room, and one occupies the seas of the main exhibition. The ships are part of a larger exhibition on dutch craftsmanship and seafaring. They were masters of the sea....you may have heard of that little operation called the DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY? every kind of ship you could imagine was represented and built my master craftsmen, who also build the full-size ships.
Ok, I need to move on because it;s 1:30 and we've got a somewhat early call.
We left the museum and toured around the gardens of the Rijksmuseum and the Museum-square, looking at the exterior of the Van Gogh Museum (we'll see it next time). We headed back to the hotel and from there we went out to dinner at the Sky Lounge, located atop the Hilton Double Tree, next to Central Station. there, with the best rooftop restaurant view in Amsterdam we had Bitterballen (Dutch fried comfort food consisting of balls f minced veal fried), drinks, and dinner, Because we are in the Netherlands, I HAD to try some jenever (pronounced yeh-neh-fer) aka gin. Gin is a Dutch invention. Cue the rainbow star and text, "The more you know!" We had dinner Peking Duck and a Wagyu beef dish, and we took a ton of pictures of the Amsterdam skyline at sunset.
We walked home through the infamous red-light district. It's super touristy and, guys, it's not that shocking. We HAD to stop off at the kitchy "sex museum" near our hotel. It was a waste of 5 Euros each (nothing too shocking in that museum) but, hey, we had an experience that we can talk about....but not on here ok? TLDR: people have pretty much been getting on with the business of "getting on" the same way they were hundreds of years ago and long before that. I'll leave it there.
Tomorrow marks the first day we hop on bikes, and we're heading to Nordwijk an Zee, which lies on the coastline of the Netherlands between Amsterdam and The Hague. Early call for breakfast tomorrow, so I"m finally signing off! One last thing...Jessi and I have been following the news and we're glad we're here right now. Hugs to all back in the states. We miss you all!
