Amsterdam Part 2

Translate the following shop signs:

    Matrassen en bedden

    Fijne wijn

    Eten en drinken

Congratulations, you are on your way to becoming a native of the Netherlands!

Now that Ann and I have been here a couple of days, we must be fitting in well, as we have twice been stopped by Dutch people asking directions! We are making the most of it, as I don't think it'll happen in Rome.

We have been the Van Gogh museum, where we finally learnt to say his name properly (Gokhh, not Goff or Go) as well as looking at hundreds of the best paintings in the world. As so often before, we wondered where his art would have gone if he had lived longer.

An early Van Gogh, from when he was a preacher in a coal mining area of the Netherlands (he was fired for being too zealous):

The last Van Gogh before he committed suicide: "Tree Roots", unfinished:

It really is worth seeing these paintings in the flesh - I now understand what all the fuss is about The Wheatfield with Crows. Not always though - I still think The Sunflowers is too yellow!

The Stedelijk museum is Amsterdam's modern art museum. It's right next door to the Van Gogh, so we went there next. It has lots of Mondrians, which kinda merge together when you've seen a few. There was a special exhibition on Kasimir Malevich, who painted in the early 20th century around the time of the Russian revolution. He was important because he was the first to paint solid blocks of colour.

Malevich isn't really my cup of tea, but I do like this one:

Or I did until Ann said "it looks like a mallet". Now I can't see anything else.

The Rijksmuseum is by far the busiest museum or gallery we have ever been to. You queue to get your ticket, you queue for the cloakroom, then you queue to get into the museum. The afterwards you queue to get your stuff back out of the changing room. It has a great collection of old masters from Amsterdam's golden age 1600-1700, but not a huge amount from after that.

That's Rembrandt's "The Night Watch", if I could be bothered to fight through the people...

If we could only go to one gallery, it would be the Van Gogh.

The Dutch people all look very fit, well dressed (edgy not flashy) and attractive - which is why we are so pleased to be mistaken for them! Also no one is fat. We are in the centre of one of the most densely populated places on earth, and have seen about four people who might be considered overweight. Only one of them was under 30. It must be all that walking and biking.

It's certainly not the food. The traditional Netherlands diet is very heavy on bread, potatoes, meat and sausage. Tonight we are going to Moeders (Mother's) Restaurant to try "Snert" and other Dutch Delicacies.