Oh no, it has been a week since my last post.  Where has that time gone.  Well…I have been quite busy.  Pete and I were in Amsterdam at the weekend which was very cold but good.  Our hotel was lovely, the television wasn’t working but to Pete’s delight we were given complimentary breakfasts two days in a row to compensate (which they did)!  It was The Manor Hotel.

I was really looking forward to visiting the Van Gogh Museum as I love his work.  Unfortunately, this is currently closed for renovation!  However, there was a temporary exhibition of his work at the Hermitage Museum which was great.  This was definitely the best place we visited as Van Gogh’s work was great.  I didn’t expect his ‘Sunflowers’ to be such lovely bright colours.

 

We also visited The Rembrandt House Museum which was very interesting.  A tour of the house was included in the price and we also got to see an etching demonstration in the room that Rembrandt worked.  The house has been furnished almost as it was when Rembrandt live there because an inventory had been taken.  I won’t tell you why in case you visit 🙂

I did really well purchasing our tickets before we left, online, as everywhere we went had a queue and I definitely would not have been very happy queuing in the cold!

The Stedelijk Museum or ‘bath tub’ as it is locally known, was an excellent modern exhibition space.  We saw works by Kandinsky, Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Mondrian within the first 10 minutes of visiting the gallery.

 

             

We were also allowed to taken photos here……….

Also saw this one by Marlene Dumas!

Henri Matisse

Willem de Kooning

Entrance hall of The Stedelijk

First room in The Stedelijk

We also visited the Heinekein Expereince, which I thought would be a laugh, but to be honest we both thought it was a right rip off.  May be we are both just getting a bit too old for places like this as my son and his friend enjoyed themselves when they visited last year!  We thought it was definitely an ‘experience’.

I had a really enjoyable weekend and would like to go back to Amsterdam one day but if I do it will be in the summer so that I can stroll around the canals and take in a little more of the outdoors 🙂