This morning we headed downstairs to join the throng of people in the breakfast room. As mentioned yesterday, there are 3 different tour groups here of about 50 in each. Therefore we managed to stay in bed a bit later and hoped to miss the crowd – did not happen.
I have wanted to do a biking tour of the city and that is possible today at 1:30 so it looked like Wes and I would have two different afternoon agendas. We headed downtown together to do a bit of shopping and walking around in the morning. Wes wanted to do a Canal boat tour and it turns out they are only one hour long so we decide we could squeeze that in together from 12:00 to 1:00. So we headed to the ticket office to arrange the tickets. Unfortunately for me it looks like the bike tour is fully booked but the company doing the tour is trying to put on another guide to do another group. The ticket agent could not tell me until after 12 if it was a go or not.
As we debated doing the Canal Tour or waiting to see about the bike tour the ticket agent offered to book a reservation for me if I would indicate an interest. So we headed off for the Canal tour knowing that I would have about 20 minutes to walk over to do the bike tour if a reservation was made. As it turns out they did not get the extra bike tour organized so I never got on today, but have a reservation for tomorrow. I mention this because it did have an impact on our plans which did transpire.
So we head out on the canal boat tour with a full boat of other tourists. We are sitting on a bench near the back and the boat has an open sliding top but windowed on the sides. Because I had planned to go on a bike tour when we left the hotel I had taken only the small camera so my pictures are not as good as I like for two reasons, the windows and the smaller camera. My excuses have been made so I will refer to these a memory shots only.
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands, with a population of 780,152. The city is in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. It comprises the northern part of the Randstad, the sixth-largest metropolitan area in Europe, with a population of approximately 8.1 million according to larger estimates.
Its name is derived from Amstelredamme, indicative of the city's origin: a dam in the river Amstel. Settled as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam became one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden Age, a result of its innovative developments in trade. During that time, the city was the leading center for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded, and many new neighbourhoods and suburbs were formed. The 17th-century canals of Amsterdam located in the heart of Amsterdam, were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2010.
Much of the Amsterdam canal system is the successful outcome of city planning. In the early part of the 17th century a comprehensive plan was put together, calling for four main, concentric half-circles of canals with their ends resting on the IJ bay. Known as the "grachtengordel", three of the canals are mostly for residential development (Herengracht or ‘’Patricians' Canal’’; Keizersgracht or ‘’Emperor's Canal’’; and Prinsengracht or ‘’Prince's Canal’’), and a fourth, outer canal, Singelgracht, for purposes of defense and water management. The plan also envisaged interconnecting canals along radii; a set of parallel canals in the Jordaan quarter (primarily for the transportation of goods, for example, beer); the conversion of an existing, inner perimeter canal (Singel) from a defensive purpose to residential and commercial development; and more than one hundred bridges. The defensive purpose of the Nassau/Stadhouderskade was served by moat and earthen dikes, with gates at transit points but otherwise no masonry superstructures. With the locks used to control the water flow in the canals these canals are fresh water rather than salt water and are not impacted by tides.
One of the interesting pieces of information shared was the Railway Central Station. The building of Amsterdam Central is situated on three man-made islands, themselves resting on 8,687 wooden piles which have been driven deep into the muddy and sandy soil. As we toured the canals we heard about the canal buildings architecture with the gabled hooks for hauling wares up to upper floors, the narrow buildings with gables and interesting rooflines, the boat houses (city only permits 2500 at a time) docked along the canals and an explanation of the commercial value of the canals for the city growth and development.
After returning from the Canal boat tour and learning that I was not able to do the bike tour today I joined Wes with his plans for the afternoon – a visit to the Van Gogh Museum. To get there we had to walk through part of the Red Light District so Wes did finally get a chance to see the area.
We arrived to find a very long line up and spent close to an hour to gain entrance. While in line we did have a chance to visit with a couple from France.
The Van Gogh Museum contains the largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh in the world. It provided the opportunity to track the artist's development, and compare his paintings to works by other artists from the 19th century. The museum also holds an extensive offer of exhibitions on various subjects from 19th-century art history. We arrived to head down to the auditorium to watch a short biography of van Gogh which really helped me to gain a perspective of his life and his progression in painting.
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art due to its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Almost unappreciated during his lifetime, Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches in less than a decade. During his career Van Gogh produced self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers.
We then proceeded to tour all four floors of the art museum where his paintings (and other paintings of artists believed to have influenced him or of artists who were influenced by him) were arranged in chronological order. This is a great way to study the work of an artist who shows signs of progression and development in his work. Needless to say we were not able to take pictures so I have had to resort to the internet for pictures for the blog of some of the paintings we saw.
As we toured we noticed that there was something be set up in the main lobby with sound equipment and chairs being arranged. On Friday nights the Van Gogh Museum is open until 10 pm and there’s always something special going on. Every Friday night, lounge chairs, video projections, live music, DJs and a bar transform the museum’s central hall into a relaxed place to meet. However, Wes was really tired by now (we have put in a long day and he is feeling better but tires quickly) so we headed back to the hotel so he could have a nap. (Ok, I napped too)
As I prepared to write the blog for today Wes remembered Don McLean’s son “Vincent” and wanted me to add a couple of links to the song. The first one includes a slide show of van Gogh work’s while the song is sang while the second link is an artist worth listening to singing the song. I hope you enjoy.
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