Visitors, Take Five (Sun - Tues)

Our final visitors in the long parade of company arrived on Sunday, May 8th, the same day that M and V flew back to Texas. Mom and Dad had been cruising along the Rhine for the past week, so they had already adjusted to the time difference and were ready to go when I picked them up at their cruise boat Sunday morning. On the train back to Utrecht, we talked about their cruise, my dog (who they're watching while we're abroad), and possible plans for the afternoon. Mr. Traveler had a baseball game, but suggested that we skip it since his team was missing their best players and playing against a team that was supposedly much more talented. By the time Mr. Traveler returned home from his game (which they won, by the way), my parents and I had already visited the Centraal Museum (where they bought their own Museumkaarts), popped into the Dick Bruna Huis, walked through the Domkerk and courtyard, and bought ingredients to make pizza for dinner.

In the evening, we checked the forecast, and it looked okay, but not great for the following day. We decided to go ahead and visit Amsterdam since there was a chance of rain, and we would be spending most of our time in museums. The next morning, the chance of rain had dropped to almost nothing, but we decided to stick with our plan (sans umbrellas).

Our first stop was the Anne Frank Huis, one of the places I'd been meaning to check off my to-do list for a while. I knew it would probably be a pretty emotional experience, but also an important one in understanding the history of the area. As we walked through the empty rooms (left unfurnished at the request of Otto Frank, Anne's father), it was hard to imagine how two families had spent so much time in the space, unable to walk without tiptoeing or talk with whispering. Quotes throughout the museum portion and powerful videos from friends and from Otto brought Anne's story to life. Even though I managed not too tear up (too much), afterwards, I felt a little emotionally drained. That combined with the rain and my building hunger made me not such a happy camper, but on we went.

Back in Dam Square, we visited the New Church (Nieuwe Kerk), which actually originated in the 15th century (even though it has undergone many renovations since that time). (We probably wouldn't have walked through the church except that it was included with the Museumkaart. One of my favorite parts of having one of the cards is that I feel a lot more willing to check out a museum or site if I don't have to pay anything extra. If I'm not enjoying myself, I feel like I can move on to something else.) Dad was fascinated by the monuments to war heroes erected inside the church and pointed out the many excesses in the design and details of the church itself. The gold gilding, the massive organ with intricately painted doors, and the size of the building seemed to be more of a monument to wealth than one to God. Even though it is a shame from an artistic and historical perspective that so much of the ornate detail in Catholic churches was destroyed during the Protestant Reformation, witnessing the excess first hand helps me see how individuals became so fed up with a system that took money from the poor (in the form of indulgences) to build such monuments to humanity.

Nieuwe Kerk

By the time we finished at the church, everyone was starving, so Mom suggested that we grab a quick lunch at the shopping mall across the street. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to order the special of the week: smoked salmon salad. Well, it was not. The salmon was okay, but the salad also had tons of hardboiled eggs which had merged with the sauce. Since I'm not a huge fan of hardboiled eggs, I had trouble stomaching a whole plate of something tasting like them. I tried to hide everything between the two large pieces of bread on my plate, but I only made it through about half of the salad before giving up. For the next two hours, I kept burping up the taste of salmon and hardboiled yolks. Yuck!

Even though I wouldn't call my lunch satisfying, it did give me enough energy to continue with the day's adventures. We boarded the tram to our next stop, the Van Gogh Museum. Even though I'd previously visited the museum, I felt that it was worth seeing again, if only to let Mom and Dad experience the massive collection of works by Van Gogh. It felt especially worth it since there was no extra cost with the Museumkaarts and we could bypass the, albeit small, line. I was pleasantly surprised to find out once we got there that the special exhibit had changed, which meant that at least part of the museum would be brand new for me. I would say I probably enjoyed this visit to the Van Gogh much more than my first one, probably due more than anything to the fact that we hadn't walked there this time, and therefore my feet still had enough stamina to stand long enough to make it through the exhibits. My favorite part of the visit, though, was the special exhibit: Picasso in Parijs, 1900-1907. Displaying his early work, the exhibit brought out another side of Picasso that is rarely seen in museums. This early work showed how Picasso struggled with finding his own technique, experimenting with many different mediums and perspectives, and sometimes imitating the works of his contemporaries.

After visiting the Van Gogh, Mom suggested that we pop on over to the Rijksmuseum. I wasn't too excited about going to the museum again, but it does provide a good overview of Dutch art: true to life, still life, drab. Luckily, the museum wasn't too crowded, so we were able to make it through fairly quickly. Afterward, we decided we all deserved a bit of rest, and we backtracked to the area of stands between the Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum to grab a drink. However, when I saw the waffles with ice cream and cherries, I couldn't resist. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten: the outside of the waffle was crispy and sprinkled with powdered sugar, while the inside was soft and fluffy. It definitely made up for my not so great choice at lunch.

With the sun finally make an appearance, I decided it would be nice to go back to Dam Square, so that Mom and Dad could see the palace (at least from the outside) and the National Monument.

National Monument

At that point, we decided we'd seen just about all the museums we could stomach for the day, but we were so close to the Old Church (Oude Kerk), that we decided to make a detour and stop by on the way back to the station. The tall stained glass windows in the church were quite stunning, but it was hard to focus on anything other than the World Press Photo exhibition, which was scattered throughout the church.

Stained Glass in the Oude Kerk

The powerful media photos brought back to life many of the events which occurred in 2010, including the earthquake in Haiti, the drug war in Mexico, and the volcanic eruption in Indonesia. (If you are interested, I would definitely recommend checking out the photos online.)

After a full day of visiting sights, I was a little tired, but much more confident that we'd made the most of our visit to Amsterdam. Packing in the sights is such a familiar travel style to me, that I didn't think twice about continuing to the each new museum or church. Plus, I think Mom and Dad felt like they'd gotten good use out of their Museumkaart investment since everywhere we went accepted the passes.

However, the next day, we made sure that the museum passes got even more use with visits to the Speelklok and Spoorweg museums. At first I was hesitant to visit the Speelklok Museum; as far as I knew it was just a museum about those silly (and slightly annoying) street organs we see a lot around here. It had, however, come highly recommended by our friends M and V and by one of my friends in the area, and Mom and Dad both said it sounded interesting. So, why not? I actually enjoyed the museum a lot more than I thought I would. There were plenty of loud street organs, but also a good variety of other automatic instruments, including antique music boxes and novelty pieces, player pianos, and something that resembled an early jukebox. After the tour ended, my dad asked a question, and the tour guide was nice enough to walk us back through the museum to show us one more instrument.

Mom and Dad in Front of a Street Organ

When we finished at the museum, we went in search of Turkish pizza, which I'd suggested as an alternative to the regular Dutch lunch of cheese and bread. (Okay, I'll admit that there are more choices than just cheese, but everything at lunch is served sandwich style.) Unfortunately, the shop we were headed to wasn't open (it looked like they'd maybe run out for a few minutes since the door was only halfway closed), and the other ones I knew about weren't nearby, so we ended up with cheese and bread anyway.

After lunch, we headed to the Spoorwegmuseum, walking along the Oudegracht on the way. Mom managed to find a quilt store, and we popped in for a minute to pick up some souvenir quilt blocks. At the museum, which I was visiting for the 3rd time, we even managed to find rooms and exhibits I'd missed on my previous visits. Dad seemed to really enjoy the museum, and he made sure that we didn't miss anything important!

Even dinner on Tuesday was a genuine Dutch experience for our guests, as we stopped to pick up a variety of cheeses, olives, and stuffed peppers from our local cheese shop. We'd already fit so much into their first few days in Utrecht, but there was still plenty of time for more. We hadn't seen any tulips, visited enough churches (this one is debatable), or been to enough cities. I'll tell you about the rest of Mom and Dad's visit soon in the second installment of "Visitors, Take Five".