What a Christian Morning ;)
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Category Archives: Netherlands
Museums, Pot and Naked People
First thing today we walked 200 meters to enter Anne Frank Huis (house). We were two of the firsts to enter the museum. It was interesting and a lot of emotions thinking about second word war and how innocent people were treated just because a mad guy had some crazy ideas.
After an hour we exited the museum and walk to Spui were we had breakfast at Cafe Hoppe, a 200 years old cafe.
From Spui we walked to the Rijksmuseum were we and a billion other people spent walking around watching famous painters from Holland, like Vermeer and Rembrandt along with important china from Delft. It took us an hour or two to get through it all.
So how do you spend the time after two museum visits? You, of course, visit a third museum. A walking distance away from Rijksmusem is the van Gogh museum. Here we spent more than an hour watching the development of a crazy painter. It seemed like Vincent van Gogh loved to change how he painted a couple of times every year. Some paintings I loved but a lot was just paint on canvas 🙂
A tram ride away from the Van Gogh museum and we were back at the Dam platz. From there we walked to the Red Light District. We saw a lot of Coffeshops and pot. And suddenly there were… Well, naked people in the doorways. It was like one room apartments where the housewife stood in the doorway chatting with whoever passed by.
The only difference was that these “housewives” had almost no clothes on and not only did they try to talk with whoever passed by they tried to lure them into their one room apartment. It was a shocking contrast to the old typical canal buildings and canals that were just around the corner.
In the evening we researched the Trip Advisor to find a good restaurant. We found Brasserie Valming, a five star establishment at the Trip Advisor. When we got there the group at the table next to us said that they had been traveling in Europe for two weeks now and this was by far the best restaurants.
This seemed good 🙂 But unfortunately the experience was only average. The personnel was friendly and service minded enough. But the food was just so so.
Gay Parade
Had breakfast at Cafe Nielsen. Quite OK, but the name was definitely much better than the breakfast itself 🙂
The morning we spent walking along the canals between boutiques and department stores. At some point we ended up at the flower market. From there we crossed a few canals and were at the Rijksmuseum. But we had planned at visit tomorrow and today we only ended up there to visit the fashion street not far from it. But no Hermes 🙁 So we got on a tram and headed back to Dam platz and the Bijkorpf (or something like that) department store where they had a Hermes boutique.
At 2 pm we started to walk towards the Prinsegracht where the Gay parade was. The canal there was lined with thousands and thousands of people. And along the canal boats with colorful creations and loud music were slowly gliding.
I think I have never seen so many happy gay people before, or even so many gay people before period. We walked along the canal watching people and the parade. Sometimes we stopped to rest and to have a closer look at the cortège of boats.
Once we got tired of all the colors from the parade we walked back to the hotel for a short rest. Then we went to the restaurant De Reiger for dinner. Again the salad was the best part of the meal, but unfortunately not as good as yesterday. The main courses was even worse.
Every coin has two sides. Living in Tokyo has an upside with the great food to a fair price. The downside to that is that most other places don’t compare. And you tend to get disappointed.
Amsterdam
We arrived in Amsterdam in the evening and went by train and taxi to our hotel, the Toren. The Toren is located along one of the canals in the central of Amsterdam just a block away from the Homo Monument and Anne Frank’s house.
It turned out that the Homo Monument was a central theme for this weekend. Tomorrow, Saturday, Amsterdam will host their famous Gay Parade along one of their canals.
But that is tomorrow and today is today. We had a long flight and was both tired and hungry. We took the most natural course of action, dinner and then back to the hotel for sleep.
After some walking around we find a the Prego restaurant not far from the hotel. We had a tasty salad and a nice mackerel starter, with only a so so main course. Maybe the main course would have been more appreciated if we would not have had to wait for it for 45 minutes.
Finally back at the hotel I had a hit bath. Then we both fell asleep. And we slept like babies the whole night.