A Tale Of Two Museums
Labels: going places
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Hubs and I went on an outing today. Just the two of us, to Amsterdam.
After dropping off Sonny-boy at school, we drove to Sittard to catch the train. The journey takes roughly two and the half hours, about the same time if we were to drive, but without the hassle of traffic jams and exhorbitant parking prices, assuming you find a spot in the first place.
Hubs makes for a good travelling companion, he listens while I talk away about this and that. And when I got tired of yapping, I pulled out my crochet and worked on it while Hubs perused his copy of Top Gear.
On today's program were two places: The Rijksmuseum and the Anne Frank Huis (House).
We went to the Rijksmuseum first.
There was the Masterpieces exhibition going on featuring great Dutch painters like Rembrandt and Jan Steen. The highlight of it was Rembrandt's painting of The Night Watch. It was amazing. Photography was not allowed as usual.
It also showcased the Netherlands in the 1600s, known as the Dutch Golden Age. It had artefacts and paintings from and about the Dutch East India Company and West India Company. I have two favourite parts of that exhibition: i)the Chinese porcelain and Delft Blue collection; ii) the dollhouse collection.
After a quickie lunch at a nearby cafe of teriyaki chicken on french bread,
we walked to our next stop, the Anne Frank Huis. It wasn't too far, just twenty minutes by foot. We could have taken the tram of course but we thought we'd soak in the local atmosphere, not to mention the air pollution as well. The Anne Frank Huis is situated along the canal so it made for a rather pleasant walk. On the left of us, we got an eyeful of the canal. On the right, we had windows of various stores, restaurants and businesses to look at.
The Anne Frank museum was certainly impressive. Not so much the size of the place per se, but rather, the history and reason behind it. We climbed right up to the Secret Annexe (steep, potentially neck-breaking small stairs typical of so many dutch houses) where the Franks and another family hid from the Germans for two years during World War II. I was rather surprised at how spacious (in context) the hidey hole was. I always had the impression, from reading Anne's diary when I was about eleven, the Secret Annexe was a very small place with all eight people falling over each other in terms of space. Well, I was wrong. With the two floors put together, it's about the size of a two to three room apartment. It even had a small kitchen area and flushing toilets. However, a prison is still a prison, no matter how large or relatively comfortable it is. I felt a mixture of awe and sadness moving from room to room.
*****
It had been an extremely good day for the Hubby and me. A little taxing on our minds because we were bombarded with so much information visually and mentally but nontheless, a pleasant, couply day of museum crawling.
The Dutchess of Cookalot whipped this up at 5:20 pm
Singairishgirl: It was a nice date. Hubs is on long leave so we must make the best of it before he goes off to work again.
Honeymeow: Ack! I'll go take a look. Thanks!
Agnes: There's still so many other museums in Amsterdam to visit. The other one we want to go is the Van Gogh Museum but we're keeping that and other places for next time.
I'm lucky that Hubs and I have a shared interest in art and history so we can do all these trips together.
