Sunday, March 16, 2008

Afternoon in Amsterdam

Though I live only a half hour from Amsterdam, I really don't make it there too often. I have a lot of museums to hit up so hopefully over time I'll make it to all of them. Brent's cousin Danielle is here visiting us for a week and a half and on a day that I got out of work early I was able to join them in a quick afternoon visit to Amsterdam.
First we went to the Van Gough museum which was pretty good. A little too pricey I think, but then again I don't believe in having to pay for museums, but I won't go into that! My favorite piece was a blossom painting he painted for his newborn nephew (pictured below as a print in the window). There was also a temporary gallery with work by John Millais; his famous work "Ophelia" is one of my all-time favorite paintings. I bought a print of it years ago at BYU, which I think most of my roommates did not like a crazy drowning girl on the wall :)


Next, we took some photos with the new slogan of the city "I AMsterdam." It is a relatively new approach to depicting the city; they are trying to move away from the view of just the drugs and prostitution to a city with a rich history and everyday people. Which it does have!

And to counteract that we of course took a walk through the red light district so Danielle could see what it is about. Its definitely another world. Its not as shocking as you would expect, but not my favorite place to be.

So it was a nice visit and I was able to visit my favorite frites (fries) stand. It is called Mannekin Pis (yes, like the highly disappointing statue in Brussels) and has the best frites, which I get with cheese sauce on them, mmm mmm they are good!

2 comments:

Kimberly said...

That is my favorite Van Gogh painting too Laura! And I agree with the museum being overpriced. When I was there, we determined it was so overpriced that we wouldn't bother going in and instead we just walked around the gift shop. :) Hey, we'd love to come and sleep on your floor for a couple days between May 7th and the 13th. Would that work?

Melissa and Aaron said...

What are you talking about?! I totally loved crazy drowning lady...well, maybe I didn't LOVE her, but I remember staring at her for quite a while one time while I was in your room at Carriage Cove. She's actually quite mesmerizing if you give her a chance:) So completely jealous of your lovely vacations!!