Day 3 September 14, 2023 A Morning inAmsterdam and Finding Our Ship

By Ellen Outten

 

The front of the Rijksmuseum 


Yes, I'm taking pictures of ceilings again.

Beth and I slept pretty well last night.  The Bank Hotel was the right choice.  It worked extremely well for us.  It was close enough to the Central station and the canal cruise as well as Dam Square, the Palace and all the shops.

I was awake at 1  l am thinking I would attend a zoom orientation meeting of the Mesa Arts Center volunteers. I will be ushering some of their shows this winter.  I joined the meeting thinking I wouldn't allow the video portion given the phs and hair at 1 am (4 pm Mesa time) and I silenced my microphone so I would just listen. Bear in mind, I'm in bed, in pajamas, and Beth is asleep so I'm trying not to make noise.  First thing the coordinator says is "everyone turn on your video and your microphones and we'll go around to find out why each of you wants to volunteer.  Let's just say that I promptly 'left the meeting ' and fell back asleep There's another one next month!  I'll dress better for it. Maybe I'll even be awake.

Breakfast this morning was at the hotel.  I bought the breakfast package with the night's lodging option since restaurants in Amsterdam do not open until 9:30 sm approximately for food service.  

A taxi was called for us and we went off for a tour of the Rijksmuseum.  We spent two hours wandering.  The highlights of the paintings we saw included Rembrandt 's, The Night Watch.

It was in a glass room all by itself and the woman in the room was getting ready to clean and restore it.  It's known for it's very large size, feeling of motion and  use of light and shadow.

The other highlights were 6 paintings by Vermeer. This area of the museum  was packed.  I wished I could have seen The Woman with the Pearl Earring but it wasn't among the pieces.  I just saw the movie on TV last week.  It's from 2003  (Tubi or Amazon  Prime) by the same name, and enjoyed it.  Try to find it.  

The ones on display were

Woman Reading A Letter 

The Milkmaid

A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals

Girl With A Red Hat


This picture reminds me of the Dutch Masters cigar boxes.  It's really
The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild, Known as ‘The Syndics’,


The painting Waterloo is HUGE.  Painted by William Sadler.


Others things housed in the museum which we saw today that I enjoyed.



Both of these are Napoleon.  They sure look different to me.

The inlay on this table is beautiful 

The Dutch are known for their Delft blue tiles


Wayne would call this a 'target'.  If it
isn't a submarine, then it must be a target.

We found an Uber just hanging around the museum and got lucky. Our driver was wonderful. He took us back to our hotel.  We grabbed our luggage and he took us straight to the ship.  We talked about the Amsterdam bicycles, compared bicycle traffic  to motor scooter traffic in Rome, motorcycles in general and travel across Europe.  He had lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, bumped from behind and another car ran over his left leg.  It doesn't keep him from doing anything.

Our stateroom was ready when we arrived. We had lunch on the ship, had time to unpack, and now it's time to kick back and let Viking do what they're best at.  I'm two beers into the afternoon and more coming!

Safety talk later, followed by dinner and some lounge entertainment.   Early to bed for me, still trying to catch up on sleep.  Besides, at some point the beer has to kick in.











Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 15, 2023 at 7:44 AM

    😂 about the zoom meeting. Beautiful pieces at the museum.

    ReplyDelete

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