Day 26 - Monday May 15, 2017 - Amsterdam
The forecast for today is ‘partly sunny’ or ‘partly cloudy’ depending on which forecast you choose to read. Either way, it sounds better than tomorrow, when possible thunderstorms are forecast. As such, today may be the day to take a Canal Cruise. However, before that, we have timed, 9 am tickets for the Van Gogh Museum.
We walk over to the Museum about 8.45. Various people standing about outside. From the outside, there appear to be two buildings so it’s not entirely clear where you’re supposed to go. As we observed yesterday, near one of the buildings is an area with rabbit-run lines, which appears to be where you go to get in line to get a ticket. Most people are over by the other building so we loiter with them. Soon after, an employee appears and announces that this is for 9 am ticket holders and to line up. Needless to say, we don’t do the line to his satisfaction so he makes everybody move to get the line where he wants it – including leaving a gap in the line in front of the disabled door. There are 15 people in the line ahead of us (you have to do something while standing in line so counting heads is as good as anything…). Soon enough, another employee appears and stands at the head of the line, by the door. He receives a constant stream of new arrivals, all clutching their (presumably 9 am) tickets and looking confused as to where they’re supposed to go. They look suitably crestfallen as he duly dispatches them to the back of the line behind us, which is growing longer by the minute. If I was him, I would have long since had some signs made and got some rabbit-run lines put in place to make it clear where to go and how it works; they really should just hire Disney to teach them how to do it. Eventually, they unlock the door and let us in. It was good to get in early but it’s not long before the crowds build and we’re shuffling round with everybody else. Although the galleries generally have some bench seating where, space permitting, you can sit and contemplate, they’re a bit hard and not nearly as comfortable as the ones at the Rijksmuseum.
Like the Rijksmuseum, we had also prepaid for the audio guide so stopped to pick that up. Again, it proved invaluable to having a much better understanding of what you were looking at and the visit would not be nearly as good without it. The material is arranged (on three floors) in more or less chronological sequence, including a lot about his background, early life and work, his letters to his brother Theo, and a lot of his earlier work and then, only towards the end, some of the ‘familiar’ works. The museum collection is based on the material inherited by Theo’s son (also called Vincent) so it was very interesting to see his earlier work and how his style and his interest changed radically. What you think of as Van Gogh was largely produced during the last few years of his life and much of his earlier work is completely different.
The National Gallery of Victoria has a ‘Winter Masterpieces’ exhibition every year. This year’s exhibition has just opened and, ironically, is ‘Van Gogh and the Seasons’ so we will go to that when we get home. That exhibition is no doubt drawn from a variety of galleries around the world so it will be interesting to see it soon after this visit.
As usual, we stop for coffee. While we’re sitting there, we decide to make an (online) reservation for dinner tonight at Buffet Van Odette (given it wasn’t Odette’s fault she had no room for us when we rocked up at 8.30 on a Saturday night without a reservation and (a) it’s recommended by our landlady, (b) it’s just round the corner and (c) it gets good reviews. Although there is an English version of the online reservation form, the response that comes back is in Dutch. I think it’s saying the reservation is confirmed but I nip up and ask the nice young lady behind the coffee machine what it says; she confirms we’re good to go.
Having finished with Vincent, we wander off back to the canal to see if we can sign up for a canal cruise. There are any number of canal cruise variations from multiple companies (including various hop-on hop-off ones) departing from various locations but the Blue Boat outfit we passed yesterday is conveniently close to home and seems as good as any. It’s now about 11.55 and their next 75 minute canal cruise departs at noon – so that’s easy. There’s a dozen or so people who board ahead of us and go and occupy all the available space out the back (which is not covered) so we sit inside in the glassed-in cabin area, which seats about 40 people. Another three people then arrive and take an age to decide which of the 38 unoccupied seats they should sit in. Eventually, the husband goes out the back, the wife sits on the starboard side and the mother/in-law sits on the port side.
Off we go. I get a very slight sense of deja vu as, 50 years ago, I went on an exchange visit to Holland (actually to Velp-Rheden, near Arnhem) and we were taken on a day trip to Amsterdam and did a canal cruise. I doubt it’s changed much…. manoeuvering the boat is interesting and not for the faint-hearted, given its size. In a few places, we have to do a 90 degree turn, usually accomplished by taking the boat to within a millimetre of the wall in front and then spinnIng the back-end around in order to get it pointed at the narrow opening under the next bridge, which usually has very little room on either side and virtually no headroom; they clearly measured the width and height of the bridges very carefully when they constructed these boats. We manage most of the required turns with aplomb – except for one, where there’s a mighty crash as we reverse into the canal wall and then bounce forward to hit it again with the front end.
The onboard commentary (available in 20 languages) has some useful information. However, whether because of the effect of crashing into the wall or just because of some technical glitch, it jumps backwards … and re-describes stuff we passed five or 10 minutes previously. To compound matters, the delivery is utterly inane. Most of it is a woman who clearly has an American south accent but keeps saying ‘we Amsterdamers’ or similar expressions in a totally unnecessary and wholly unconvincing way. From time to time, she throws in an aside or ‘joke’ with her supposed ‘husband’, whose responses are usually even worse. The factual information is useful but the overall effect is utterly cringeworthy.
We duly return after 75 minutes and head over to the Back To Black cafe at the end of the street from the apartment to get some lunch. That done, we head to the Aldi store down the street to get a few supplies and then head back to the apartment for a siesta.
In due course, we head off up the street and round the corner for our 7 pm reservation at Buffet Van Odette. Odette (if in fact it was she we met on Saturday night) was not present, perhaps taking Mondays off, but her minions were very pleasant and welcoming. It was fairly quiet when we got there but filled up considerably by the time we were finished. The food was excellent – lentil soup and ravioli for me, sea bream ceviche and salmon and lentils for Anne-Margaret. Its excellent reputation and good reviews are well deserved.
Photography generally not allowed in the Van Gogh Museum so no photos from there (except me in front of a copy near the gift shop).