The weather was even more miserable this morning, so we needed to come up with a wet weather plan. We’re not really an art and history family, but we thought we could check out one of the world class museums on offer in Amsterdam. We were spoilt for choice, but decided on the Rijksmuseum. It seemed to offer the most diverse range of art and the building itself looked pretty impressive. We invested in a tram pass to minimise time in the rain, and found our way to Museumplein.
For the next little while we wandered around doing our best to appreciate the various displays. There were famous paintings like Rembrandt’s “Night Watchman” and Van Gogh’s self portrait. And there was a huge assortment of less famous stuff from an FK23 plane to Asian art to antique dolls houses. And as expected my favourite was the actual building not the displays. We were really glad that we had visited such a famous museum and did enjoy it, although I suspect a true art enthusiast would be a bit horrified at the speed with which we moved through the museum!
The next part of our rainy day plan was a spot of shopping. Anna was particularly keen for a Primark experience. Primark is an Irish “fast fashion” retailer, and the Amsterdam store offered 5 levels of cheap and cheerful clothing. Anna loved the place, Matt got bored quickly as only one floor was for the guys and it wasn’t even a full floor. It was unbelievable how much people were buying in this store, we saw lots of people at the checkout with 20 or 30 items. What on earth do they do with all this stuff? Anna left with one item (but with plans to return to Edinburgh Primark), Matt bought nothing and I bought a couple of Amsterdam tea towels.
Amsterdam is famous for its floating flower market, although we weren’t sure how many flowers we would find in the middle of winter. There were plenty of flowers, but they were either wooden or fabric. Most of the living things were just bulbs or seeds, some of which you would not find in a NZ garden centre! We wandered back to the hotel via the smallest house in Amsterdam – a mere 2 metres wide and 5 metres deep.
Amsterdam has a huge number of Argentinian Steak restaurants that appear to offer fantastic deals. We were curious why there were so many and wondered whether the Dutch had special connections with Argentina. After some quick googling it appeared the answer was no, and these were tourist trap restaurants mostly run by Egyptians that were best avoided. However by that stage we had Matt craving a steak and figured there must be a decent steak restaurant nearby. Thanks to Tripadvisor, I found one 200m from our hotel that had great reviews and was bookable online. The 6pm slot offered 30% off food, so we were in. The food was delicious and an absolute bargain at $78 for everything.
The skies cleared after dinner so we grabbed the chance to walk the canals and check out some of the Amsterdam Light Festival. There were various light installations along the canals. No doubt there was great meaning behind the art, but it was a bit lost on us. It was a fun walk anyway.
