Two days, two emails, keep your fingers near the delete button if you're bored, but Joani and I made our last day in Amsterdam memorable. (For any of you that have your mind in the gutter, it didn't include drugs and prostitutes, although we did spend our last hour, downtown in the red light district, but unlike last time we were here, we never saw any prostitutes and although we passed by a few drug shops we found that the smell of pot was clogging up our sinuses and we had to leave the area.)
What was memorable about the day was; In the morning we went to the airport and rented a car. I find it so cool driving in these European countries, although at one point in time our Garmin completely lost the highway we were on and by the time we found it we had to make a fancy detour to get back on track. A second time, due to highway construction we couldn't go the route the Garmin was insisting we take and we had to ad lib for about 20 or 30 kilometers on a secondary route with the help of a very friendly road construction worker. All part of the fun of driving in a European country!
Eventually we made our way to Otterlo where the Kroller Muller museum houses the second largest collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world. I try very hard to be a good husband but when we got inside, the first thing Joani had to do was find a bathroom and I'll tell you, not running ahead to see this Van Gogh collection was a supreme effort on my part. Honour and Chivalry prevailed and I waited but when Joani came out of the ladies room I insisted we rush past the first few rooms that contained paintings by lesser mortals and get to the heart of the matter, Vincent (did I tell you he was great) Van Gogh!!!
I think Joani was again wondering whether or not, I had built this visit up so much in my mind, that the reality might not live up to my imagination. Fear not, mes amis. The Kroller Muller museum is simply one of the coolest museums I have ever been to and at the risk of you deleting this email right now, I'm going to drone on about why it's so cool.
In case you're unaware the Kroller Muller museum is located in a large national park, so when we drove up to where we were buying our tickets, the first thing we saw is that there was an admission price for the park and a second price for the park and Museum. I said that we would just like museum tickets and was informed that since it was in the park, that was not possible. Why was that cool you ask? We bought the joint tickets (You knew it was too late to turn back now) and then were told we could either take a 1/2 hour stroll through the park or we could use the free park bicycles and take a 15 minute ride. Joani and I had already talked about renting bikes and they were giving them to us free to ride through pristine park land.
What a cool way to start our visit.
Once we got to the actual paintings I was again completely amazed at how much I love Van Gogh. To a lot of people it probably makes no sense and I couldn't really tell you why I relate to his paintings so strongly but the fact remains that I can look at a large amount of Van Gogh canvases and feel that I know exactly what he was trying to say or express and, oh man do I find him expressive.
There were as many strong canvases as there were at The Museum in Amsterdam but this Museum had, of course, the "Café Terrace a Nuit". I've been waiting most of my life to stand in front of this canvas and it didn't disappoint. While it didn't have the movement of light that Van Gogh managed to create in some other works with his brushstrokes and colour, the ambiance and atmosphere he created gave it a an incredibly warm feeling and the people sitting at the Café and walking seemed to come alive with movement. It was simply beautiful.
Any Van Gogh fans reading this should make an effort to get to this park to see this painting and others by the man.
Now if you've heard enough about Van Gogh, I'll take a shorter time to tell you that their were also some paintings by some other artists you might have heard of. Renoir, Cezanne, Monet.
An exceptional Picasso.
A very wonderful Seurat.
(Yes Matthew, I do get the point of pointillism)
We finished our visit with a walk through the sculpture garden.
I was feeling extremely confident that I had sated my Van Gogh fixation for the time being.
We drove to another City called Utrecht, visited a Dutch castle
and then drove back to Amsterdam where we returned our rental car and ended the day with the very quick trip through the red light district as previously mentioned. Another full exciting tiring day. I think we'll fly to Greece to rest from our Amsterdam adventures.
Garry
No comments:
Post a Comment