Amsterdam, Part Three: When will she
hush up already.
Just be grateful it wasn't a three day
weekend in Paris. Then you'd never hear the end of it.
Okay, so we purchase 24 hour Iamsterdam
cards to explore the city with the first night, and activated them
the second day. If you ever go to Amsterdam, save yourself hundreds
of dollars and get these. For 40 Euro, or about $50, you can enter
any participating museums for free, or discount rates, and you get a
24 hour tram/boat/bus ticker. This boat is supposed to be the hop on
hop off one. This card is well worth the price.
Why? Because bar minimum, you save 25%
on tickets the run around 15 Euro on average, if not much more, and
are never ever less than 10. Ten euro is basically the super cheap
museums. We used these yesterday, but if we got up early enough and
hurried then we had enough time for one more free museum before we
left. We managed two.
Our targets? The Hermitage Amsterdam
and the Rembrandt House. Mission Successful! Loved it!
Okay, so Van Gogh and I don't get
along, but when it comes to Baroque Art, I am totally in seventh
heave. (Van Gogh's more famous art pieces are modern or
semi-classical.) So the Hermitage Amsterdam, a branch of the
Hermitage in St. Petersburg, was like standing at the Pearly Gates.
It was a large museum, despite being
'only' a branch, and it had a lot of small art 'cabinets' surrounding
the man room. These were about the size of a walk in closer.
Apparently, due to size constraints, they only do one exhibit at a
time.
This time was a Rubens, Van Dyck, and
Jordaens exhibit. All three are Flemish master artists who worked
closely together. all three are also baroque artists which explains
my earlier squealing.
There were several hunting scenes
there, many still life paintings with an assortment of dead birds and
flowers in them, and lots of religious artworks, mythological
artworks, and of course portraits. Aft all, for centuries, religion
and portraits were how artists earned their bread and butter.
So I enjoyed it greatly and learned
loads about painting and how to! This, as a very amateur hobby
artist, gave me great pleasure.
Apparently, a lot of paintings are able
to have the artist determined by the sketching style, or at least the
main artist. Those life size paintings the 'masters' produced?
Often, a lot of it was painted in by the artist's pupils are the
master had done the initial painting. Gasp!
That would be some kind of scandal
today.
I mentioned that I learned a bit about
how to paint? Well, that was due to videos about the artist that
were playing. Rubens was known for his ability to make the colors
pop. How? He had three layers of paint on all his paintings, and
the initial layer was grey, not white. Hm...
They also showed side by side
comparisons of a lot of initial sketches. From the sketch, for
especially large artworks, a quick oil painting model would be
painted, sans a lot of the fine details. This looked like a lot of
the oil paintings a friend of mine did in high school. Always knew
she was great.
My favorite two paints were a family
portrait and one of Aphrodite and Adonis, as Aphrodite begged Adonis
not to go on the hunt which would end his life, wee Eros trying to
stop the handsome man as well. She had a prophetic dream, you see.
I'm sure you can find the myth if you look it up.
My other favorite was a family of six.
What stood out to be was how casual it was, the family at ease with
each other, the toddler's ribbon leash gently clasped in the mother's
hand.
Oh, you thought child leashes were new?
Hardly. Ribbons used to sen onto the back of their clothes for the
mother to keep their adventurous tot close.
The sheer amount of art there was
astounding and mind blowing. However, in comparison to the Rembrandt
House, it was positively empty. Yet the Hermitage held much more.
The difference was in the organization.
Rembrandt's house was organized how it had been in his life, based
on inventory and sketches. As Rembrandt sold his art from his canal
side home, the art was everywhere. I was very overwhelmed by it all,
but as a result, more unimpressed than anything else. Too much good
art at once makes it all look bad. This house was, of course, our
next spot.
Once out of his show areas, I grew much
more impressed. The museum had a wealth of his sketches and
engravings. While he may be known now for his painting, he also
sketched and engraved expertly. In fact, he was known them more for
his engravings, which show a seriously frightening attention to
detail.
I almost want to try engraving myself
after seeing some of his work, though I don't think my hands are near
steady enough.
After this, we planed on going to an
art exhibit of Jewish artifacts and history, but our Iamsterdam cards
hard run out and ticker were, well, I like to say prohibitively
expensive, but you might say $42 a pop.
Ha. No.
You are not the Louvre. You are an old
church, with Jewish things inside. I'm not paying that much to learn
about what I can read in my bible and a history book. Like I said
though. the Iamsterdam card is worth it, if only because otherwise
museum tickets are scary expensive.
We finished off our time in Amsterdam
at an Irish pub. I had the tuna panini, and if it isn't obvious, I'm
a tuna fan. I absolutely adored the atmosphere. It had a bar, but
it wasn't a bar, if you know what I mean.
Okay, so a few things my flow of
thought just did not leave room for: bike garages, witty graffiti,
color changing buildings, and Wall Street in the Red Light district.
No joke, there was a three story garage
that held about 400 bikes per level and there still isn't enough bike
parking in Amsterdam! One clever individual 'parked' his bike with
two bike locks on the, ah, water side of the bridge's railing. Well,
at least no one will steal his parking space?
Also, if it wasn't just a name or
initials in chrome, much of the graffiti consisted of witty statement
in English. Less artistic than German graffiti, but less prolific
over all as well. Smaller too in general. Most I saw was just about
size 60 font. Maybe I jsut didn't see the good graffiti? Either
way, the stuff in France is the most artistic so far.
We did walk through the Red Light
district to get to our tram. I didn't see the big fuss. The ladies
of the night were behind glass, clothes in bikinis and with the most
bored looks on their face as they wiggled. I can't call it dancing.
It'd be an insult to dancing.
No the best part of it all was where
Wall Street was. That would be inside the boundaries of the Red
Light district. What does this say about Wall Street? I mean, I can
think of several things, but I suspect they would be rather rude to
say and write.
Just outside the district was Occupy
Amsterdam, which I could not get my family to stop at. The stock
exchange is in the Red Light district and the protestors are not.
That's a commentary on society right there, in some obscure way I'm
sure my English professors would be proud of.
Oh yeah, and the color changing
building was the World Fashion something or another. Gorgeous at
night, but during the day a dull stone building.
On the way back home, we went under a
grass animal bridge that I do not know how I missed the first time.
This one is bother wider than and more natural than others I've seen,
so I think it's much more likely to be used.
As for my loot: five pins (three
Rembrandt, one Holland, one Amsterdam), a Van Gogh transforming cube
with lots of art on it, a series of post cards from the Anne Frank
house showing the book case closed, a deck of cards from the Rijk
museum detailing a famous tulip painting.
No photos. I completely forgot my
camera, and wouldn't be able to take pictures inside the museums
anyway. I might get the photos from my step sister or my dad.
Maybe.
One Final Byte: I saw so many things I
didn't say.
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