Final Group Dinner



The restaurant, called the Pantry, served typical and authentic Dutch comfort food. Hilbren explained that there are few Dutch restaurants in the Netherlands because Dutch food is uncomplicated and homey. So most people eat at home. The majority of restaurants in the city serve food from other places: Indonesian (especially popular), Asian, and Italian, to name a few.

As you can see, we were pretty packed in here. Plus, it was a Friday night so the place was crowded. For our group dinners, we had pre-ordered our meals a day or two in advance from choices posted by Hilbren (however, we could never remember our selections!). This, as I may have mentioned before, makes it much easier for the restaurant staff to prepare and serve our rowdy group. 

Tonight, the starter choices were goat cheese croquets, shrimp croquets, or Dutch pea soup. The main course choices were a salmon filet with mashed potatoes; ground beef with sautéed onions, mashed potatoes and beets; or a ground beef casserole with cauliflower and "Old Amsterdam Cheese."



And, the dessert choices--the only ones I care about--were chocolate brownies; Vlaaflip (a mixture of yogurt, cottage cheese, and custard--seriously!?); or Poffertjes (little pancake fritters). By now, we had had enough Dutch pancakes and you can guess what most of us chose.

On the way back, we wandered through Vondelpark, a huge, lively city park popular with the Dutch. Families with little kids, romantic couples, strolling seniors, and even hippies sharing blankets and beers hang out here. It is also a popular and favored venue for free summer concerts and Friday night inline skating during the summer and early fall.

Although some of our buddies continued the party, Sam and I quietly slipped away to return to the hotel. We had an taxi reserved for 6:00 AM the next day so the alarm would ring early. We were headed back to Houston after another fun sisters' trip to Europe.

Max Euweplein and Tiny Souvenirs

Rick Steves' tours always end with a group dinner, our final gathering. And I think this was the first time on this trip where we had to walk in a little downpour on our way to the restaurant. We've been lucky with the weather; in fact, I know I was dressed too warmly on some days.



This scene caught our attention as we scurried by. In a pleasant interior courtyard surrounded by cafés and the ever-popular Hard Rock, this large chessboard with knee-high kings gets a lot of attention. The square is named after Max Euwe, a Dutch world chess champion. He is known for beating 14-year-old Bobby Fischer in 1957 with 20 moves.



We quickly took shelter under a row of tall, grey, Greek-style columns next to the square. Had we not had our heads tucked into our collars to avoid rain in our faces, we might've seen the Latin inscription above the colonnade--"Homo Sapiens non urinat in ventum." It supposedly translates to "People, don't pee into the wind." Good advice.



This is where we paused for Hilbren to give a little speech and hand out a little souvenir. I will add these tiny porcelain blue and white Dutch shoes to my miniature reminders of past Rick Steves' tours.

Our Traditional Old Friend, Plus Dam Square

Sam and I have a tradition of eating at McDonald's in all the European cities we visit. I mentioned to her when we arrived in Amsterdam (our last stop) that we hadn't done it yet on this trip... And yesterday, while walking with the group down the pedestrian street, Kalverstraat, guess what we spied?

So this afternoon, we found our way back to maintain our tradition. Some travelers consider it sacrilege to stop at a Burger King, a Starbucks, a McDonalds when out of the country. But we've stopped hiding from this; sometimes, you just need a "taste of home." (Yes, sir, we've seen a lot of museums in eleven days! I love this shirt!)

On the way back to the hotel, we walked again through Dam Square, which is the historic heart of the city. Amsterdam got its start here around 1250, when fishermen in this marshy delta settled along the built-up banks of the Amstel River. They built a "damme" to bloc the Amstel River and created a small village called "Amstel-damme." Get it?

My memories of Dam Square are from my very first trip to Europe in 1989. The square seemed bigger then (isn't that always the way?) and was busy, busy, busy with drunks, bums, and street entertainers, like this accordion player entering his "venue" today to join the mimes, jugglers, and human statues who still mingle with locals and tourists. I even remember from my first trip a person swinging on a trapeze which reached into the air! And all this was happening during the day--you can imagine what "events" were held in the evenings. But Amsterdam has been cleaned up over the decades and is not as seedy as my first impressions attest. And yet I have very fond memories of that trip.

The Bulldog Café Coffeeshop, towards where the accordion player is headed, is not the most famous or original Bulldog, which is in the Red Light District facing a canal. The chain claims to be the city's very first marijuana coffeeshop established here in 1975. It is a famous and well-known destination for all young American visitors--touristy like a Hard Rock Café. True connoisseurs (and Rick Steves' tour members), however, seek out smaller, neighborhood places with better-quality pot and those playing Donovan music for their older and mellower clientele.

The Outdoor Gardens of the Rijksmuseum

As we left the museum, our paths took us through the relaxing Rijksmuseum garden, also restored with an eye to Cuypers' original vision. It features statues, fountains, ponds, and five centuries of Dutch architectural artifacts.

Sam hopped into the middle of this fountain--and escaped without a drop.

Sculptures by Henry Moore (1898-1986), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, are featured in the gardens. His monumental figures seem abstract, yet are clearly inspired by natural forms. On Moore's walks across the rolling English countryside, he would often collect animal bones which he sometimes literally transformed into sculptures.

A key theme in Moore's oeuvre is the reclining figure, in which the human body acquires a landscape-like quality. He tried to express--in stone or bronze--the energy he felt in nature: "I would like to think my sculpture has a vitality from inside it."

For example, his "Reclining Woman: Elbow" (above) was placed at the main entrance of the Leeds (England) City Art Gallery in 1982. Detractors complained: "Puzzling, suggestive, ridiculous, and diabolical," the Yorkshire Post commented. But that changed. When the sculpture was removed to be shown at the Rijksmuseum, the newspaper wrote, "You'll miss her when she's gone."

The sensual curves of the "Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut" are interrupted by the incision in the center. Yet this also creates space, like the eye at the top (not visible in this photo), through which the sky appears. These hollows are typical of Moore's exploration of the sculpture's connection with its environment.

Henry Moore isn't the only sculptor featured in these gardens. "Mercury and Psyche" is a copy of a famous work by Adriaen de Vries now in the Louvre. De Vries worked at Giambologna's studio in Italy and for Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. As a result, he enjoyed considerable fame abroad, while remaining relatively obscure in the Netherlands. This copy was commissioned in 1890 for the Rijksmuseum garden.

I was also fascinated with this beautiful "street art" displayed in a shallow pond stretching out in front of the museum. We wandered around the neighborhood after leaving the museum, looking for a pastry shop my friend asked me to locate. We gave up after about 30 minutes and ended up at a souvenir shop where we bought some t-shirts. Then it was time for some lunch.

Rembrandt's "Night Watch "

This is one of the most famous and well-known paintings hanging in the Rijksmuseum and deserves a separate post. As usual, the more you learn about a painting, the more interesting it becomes. Rembrandt's masterpiece, the "Night Watch," his most famous--though not necessarily greatest--is a group portrait of a company of Amsterdam's militiamen, the city's civic guard. Rembrandt made the painting in 1642 at the age of 36 for their guild headquarters, the Kloveniersdoelen. It hung in the large assembly room, together with six other group portraits.

 

Standing in the foreground are Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (in black with a red sash) giving an order and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, focusing on the captain's every word. That Rembrandt depicted the militiamen in action is quite exceptional; until then, "sitters" in such group portraits were either standing or sitting stiffly next to one another.

The painting is full of action: flags waving, drums beating, the guardsmen (who, by the 1640s, were really only an honorary militia of rich bigwigs) spilling onto the street from under an arch in the back. It's "all for one and one for all" as the soldiers grab lances, load their muskets, and rush to Amsterdam's rescue.

Rembrandt used light to emphasize important details, such as the captain's hand gesture and the girl in the pale dress. She is probably the civic guard's mascot and is one of the figures Rembrandt added to animate the composition. The drummer at the far right and the boy running at the left were added for similar reasons.

The painting was a smashing success in its day. However, there are elements in it that show why Rembrandt soon fell out of favor as a portrait painter. He seemed to spend as much time painting the dwarf and the mysterious glowing girl with a chicken as he did the faces of his employers.

But Rembrandt caught the optimistic spirit of Holland in the 1600s. Its war of independence from Spain was heading to victory and the economy was booming. These guardsmen on the move epitomize the proud, independent, upwardly mobile Dutch. Compared with other, less famous group portraits, where every face is visible, well-lit, flat, and flashbulb-perfect, these people paid good money to have their faces preserved for posterity, and they wanted to be right up front. Other group portraits may be colorful, dignified works by a master...but not quite masterpieces. Rembrandt rousted the Civic Guards off their fat duffs. And by adding movement and depth to an otherwise static scene, he took posers and turned them into warriors--a simple portrait became great art.

Some other "Night Watch" scuttlebutt. First, "Night Watch" is a misnomer since it's a daytime scene. But over the years, as the preserving varnish darkened and layers of dirt built up, the sun set on this painting and it got its popular title. When the painting was moved in 1715 from the large hall of the Kloveniersdoelen to a smaller room in Amsterdam's town hall, three sides were lopped off so it would fit in between two doors in its new location! This resulted in putting the two main characters in the center and causing the work to become more static than intended. (Unfortunately, the pieces were lost.)



During WWII, when the Nazis where "shopping" for art throughout Europe, the painting was rolled up and hidden for five years. In 1975, a madman attacked it, slicing the captain's legs; and in 1990, it was sprayed with acid (skillfully restored after both incidents). Such a dramatic history.

Rembrandt's life darkened long before his "Night Watch" did. This work marked the peak of his popularity...and the beginning of his fall from grace. Free from the dictates of employers, he painted what he wanted and how he wanted. Rembrandt went beyond mere craftsmanship to probe into, and draw life from, the deepest wells of the human soul.

On our way out of the museum, a person is usually forced into the gift shop. This was a fun construction game for children based on the famous painting. But we didn't indulge in any retail therapy here today.

By the way, "Night Watch" is now back in its original position in this beautiful gallery at the center of the museum, exactly where architect Cuypers had originally placed it in 1885. And it is always surrounded by mobs of people.

Visiting the Rijksmuseum

The 17th century saw the Netherlands at the pinnacle of its power when they won their independence from Spain. Trade and shipping boomed; wealth poured in; the Dutch people were understandably proud; and the arts flourished. This became their Golden Age. And after so much sober religious art from the Middle Ages, artists discovered upper-middle-class businessmen in the Protestant republic who fueled Holland's capitalist economy and thus, commissioned big canvases to flaunt their prosperity. In the 17th century alone, five million paintings were hanging in those peoples' homes. Eventually, the best of these needed a place to be displayed.


This morning found our group marching to a guided tour of the Rijksmuseum (which means, the "State Museum"). Thanks to a ten-year, 374 million euros renovation, it once again matches the vision of its 19th century architect, Pierre Cuypers. Built in 1885 to house the Netherland's greatest art, a series of brutal 20th century renovations chopped up and painted over a great amount of the massive complex. But today, much of Cuypers' original Gothic-revival design is back: natural light floods large rooms with high ceilings and long viewing galleries surround two massive courtyards, walled up for half a century.

The Rijksmuseum has up to 8,000 works on display (from the 13th through the 20th centuries), including several thousand paintings. The incomparable collection of 17th century Dutch Masters includes those by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Steen. Now, around the museum, many pieces are displayed together in their cultural context, making the exhibits a lively mix of Delftware, photographs, decorative objects, paintings, etc. The renovation has restored this great building to its original 1885 glory. And it's beautiful inside.

After an informative tour by a docent (we were divided into two groups), we were released to continue exploring on our own. It's a huge place and there were lots of things we wanted to see.



Of course, Sam and I were "forced" to try some fancy drinks and sweets in the fancy café before we continued our treasure hunt. It seems like we're now doing "morning cake and coffee!" Delicious!

Climbing up to the second floor on a staircase which hasn't been replaced since 1885, we entered the Great Hall. With its stained-glass windows, vaulted ceiling, and gilt moldings, this looks like the inside of many cathedrals we've seen on our travels. And it is--a cathedral to Dutch art and history. For more than 50 years, this space was painted over and used as a lobby and gift shop. For the recent restoration, it was returned back to Cuypers' design. The late-Victorian murals on the walls are original, restored after a long absence--the murals were deemed chauvinistic and taken down in the 1920s. They celebrate great moments in Dutch history--lots of explorers and warrior kings.

 

 

Who doesn't recognize Frans Hals' (1581-1666) the "Merry Drinker," which he painted in 1627? This jovial man in a black hat captures the earthy, exuberant spirit of the Dutch Golden Age. The militiaman merrily raises his glass of Berkemeyer to toast us. Hals' bravura painting style--the spontaneously applied brushstrokes enhancing the portrait's sense of liveliness and animation--ensured the continued success of the artist. We were now headed, along with many other museum visitors, to see the famous Vermeer section.

 

 

The master of tranquility and stillness, most of Vermeer's canvases show interiors of Dutch homes where women are engaged in everyday activities, lit by a side window. The Rijksmuseum has the best collection of Vermeers in the world--four of them. (There are only 34 in captivity, including "The Music Lesson" owned by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.)

 

 

In one of my favorites, "The Milkmaid" (1658), a maidservant, entirely absorbed in her work, pours milk  into a bowl. Except for the stream of milk, which you can almost hear, everything else is still. The sign next to the painting explains, "Vermeer took this simple everyday activity and made it the subject of an impressive painting--the woman stands like a statue in the brightly lit room. Vermeer also had an eye for how light by means of hundreds of colorful dots play over the surface of objects."

 

We saw much, much more, like Rembrandt's "Isaac and Rebecca: (a.k.a. "The Jewish Bride", 1667), but our minds were saturated and it was time to move on.

 

Do You Feel Anything Yet?

 
After touring the Van Gogh museum and returning to the hotel, Sam took a rest while I headed to the lobby for an espresso, some Bruges chocolates, and to test my "cake." I was a little hesitant because I have never indulged in marijuana and didn't want to make a fool of myself--who knew how I was going to react to this soft drug. I had an interesting conversation with the young hotel clerk (very hip and nice--probably the son of the owners) and he was very intrigued (or incredulous?) by my experiment.

I decided to only eat a small piece--not even a quarter slice, as listed on the package instructions. And every 15 minutes, the young man looked over at me and said, "Do you feel anything yet?" I didn't--and just continued reading and relaxing. Eventually, Sam came downstairs and our tour buddies began drifting into the lobby, returning from their afternoon adventures.

It was obvious that I wasn't the only one who had been eating "cake." Bud, the guy from Cape Cod, had already been snacking and looked a little bleary-eyed. And the big, burly retired Brooklyn cop came downstairs wearing an earring! Sam and I hadn't really mixed with any of the group outside of group events so we joined several couples and Bud for a nice dinner that evening. "Do you feel anything yet?"

 
We walked to a lovely restaurant, Bicken, and sat outside; it was a very nice evening and we had a lot of laughs. Closest to the camera are Mike and Peggy from Sonoma, CA; then Pam and Larry from Brooklyn; Bud (waving) from Cape Code; and Herman and Kay from Youngstown, OH.

As you can tell, this was a fairly fancy place (expensive)--small portions of food but displayed beautifully.

 
And by this time, I was feeling something--very, very giggly--more so than usual. And at one time, Sam leaned over and said I was pretty quiet (which is VERY unusual). Besides the intermittent giggling, I remember thinking (again) that I did not want to make a fool of myself. And I was having trouble following the conversations going on around me. By the time someone made it to the end of a sentence, I had lost track of the beginning of it! Very strange.
 
I tried to explain this to the lobby clerk when I returned--because he caught my eye right away and asked, "Do you feel anything yet?" I said that I was really giggly but that could've been because I was drinking wine. His eyes widened and he blurted out, "You were drinking wine, too!?!" "Was I not supposed to?" I asked...

I had complained that my sleep the previous night was like being in a Dali painting--I believed I never slept because objects were constantly flying around in my brain. This night--after eating some "cake"--I again believed that morning arrived without any sleep. But as I lay in a comatose state, the objects (or thoughts) were lazily floating around in my brain and I was entirely calm. The next day, I handed the rest of my "cake" to Bud. I knew it was in good hands...

Rembrandtplein and Other Street Art

The site of this leafy square was another city gate in the defensive walls constructed to protect the city in the Middle Ages. It was renamed Rembrandtplein when this cast iron statue by Louis Royer (1793-1868) was moved here in 1876. Cast in one piece, it is Amsterdam's oldest surviving statue in a public space and stands on a grey granite base bearing a replica of Rembrandt's signature. Coincidently, the square is near where the famous painter owned a house from 1639 to 1656.

 

 

As part of the artist's 400th birthday celebration in 2006, Russian artists Mikhail Dronov and Alexander Taratynov made bronze-cast representatives of a jaunty group of statues from his most famous painting and displayed them around Royer's work. We'll be seeing the "Night Watch" tomorrow at the Rijksmuseum.

 

Evidently, this is quite a lively area, especially with late-night dance groups who party here into the wee hours. Sam and I just wandered upon it while we were looking for a pharmacy on our way home from the Van Gogh Museum. She hoped to find some heat packs for her black eyes.

 

 

We also came across this rough clay statue reclining on a half roof outside a restaurant. As I snapped the photo, some guy sitting in a courtyard said something about sharing in the profits from my photograph. Huh? And because he wasn't smiling, I pretended I didn't speak English (again) and kept walking.

Which way do we go? Actually, we knew where we were when we got back to the museums. Circular route, anyone? And after stepping into a hotel along the way to ask about the nearest pharmacy (which was just around the corner), Sam discovered that any heat pads they had for sale were w-a-y too big for her face.

Vincent van Gogh, the Man

"I am a man of passions," said Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).

When I read Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo, I was surprised to learn they were sons of a pastor and, in fact, Vincent toyed with becoming a minister. Although his first job at age 16 was clerking for an art dealership, his two interests--art and religion--distracted him from his dreary work and he was eventually fired.

The next ten years were a collage of dead ends as Vincent bounced around northern Europe (England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), pursuing one path after another. In his letters to Theo and their parents, he writes of launching into each project with incredible energy, then becoming disillusioned and moving on to something else: teacher at a boarding school, assistant preacher, bookstore apprentice, preacher again, theology student, English student, literature student, art student. He fell in love but was rejected; he quarreled with his family and was estranged; he lived with a prostitute and her daughter, offending the few friends he had. Finally, in his late 20s, worn out, flat broke, and in poor health, Vincent returned to his family and made peace. That's when he started to paint.

The self-portrait by the artist (top) was painted in 1888 while he was living in Paris with Theo (March 1886 - February 1888). The budding young artist proudly displayed his new palette full of bright new colors. He was trying his hand at Impressionism techniques--building a scene using dabs of different-colored paint. A whole new world of art--and life--had opened up to him in Paris.

While there, along other Impressionist painters, Vincent learned the shimmering effect which comes from placing dabs of different colors side by side on the canvas. At a distance, the two colors blend in the eye of the viewer to become a third color. In the "Self-Portrait with Straw Hat" above (1887), Vincent used separate strokes of blue, yellow, green, and red to create a brown beard--a beard which seems to throb with excitement.

"You wouldn't recognize Vincent, he has changed so much... The doctor says that he is now perfectly fit again. He is making tremendous strides with his work... He is also far livelier than he used to be and is popular with people." - Theo van Gogh to their mother

Van Gogh's use of color is world-famous. Many of his theories can be traced back to that of complimentary colors. In "Irises," yellow and purple--colors that reinforce each other, according to the theory--thus maximize their effect. The purple (a mixture of red and blue) is now mainly blue, since the red pigment has faded.

Despite his new sociability, as referenced by Theo, Vincent never quite fit in with his Impressionist friends. As he developed into a good painter, he became anxious to strike out on his own. Also, he thought the social life of the big city was distracting him from serious work. Wanting peace and quiet, a place where he could throw himself completely into his work, he headed for the sunny south of France.

"The worse I get along with people, the more I learn to have faith in Nature and concentrate on her."

He saw sunflowers as his signature subject and he painted a half-dozen versions of them, each a study of intense yellow. Even a simple work like the one above, painted in 1889, bursts with life. But during his time in Provence, he swung from flurries of ecstatic activity to bouts of great loneliness. And after his friend, fellow artist Paul Gauguin, arrived, things went sour very fast. This began his spiral into "acute mania with hallucinations," as diagnosed by an Arles' doctor. (By the way, in January 2014, the painting above was displayed at London's National Gallery next to the sunflowers he painted in 1888--the first time in six decades they have been hung side by side.)

Vincent spent some time--productive time, actually--in a St. Remy mental hospital, still painting as his health seemed to improve: pictures of his hospital room, the gardens of the asylum, and landscapes (when he was allowed outside) like "The Garden of Saint Paul's Hospital" painted in 1889 (or, as it's also known, "The fall of the leaves"). The stark brown trees are blown by the wind, and a solitary figure (Vincent?) makes his way along a narrow winding path as the wind rains leaves down on him. The colors are surreal--blue, green, and red tree trunks with heavy black outlines. A road runs away from us, heading nowhere.

How much of these paintings reflect Vincent's spiral into total depression and finally putting a bullet through his chest? Although his life was sad and tragic, the record he left us is one of beauty. And I'm beginning to appreciate that beauty more and more.

Believe it or not, Vincent sold only one of his canvases during his lifetime--to a woman in Brussels. In 1987, one of his "Sunflowers" sold for $40 million and three years later, a portrait of his doctor for more than $80 million. Sadly, this "famous after the fact" was not uncommon for some of Europe's most renown artists.

The Van Gogh Museum

In 2000, on Sam's first trip to Amsterdam, neither one of us had any interest in Vincent van Gogh. Not only that, we only had about 45 minutes to visit the museum that day and chose, instead, to enjoy the sunshine and vast green space between the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh's.

But tastes change--or mature. We are now more interested in Vincent--I've been studying and reading about him for the past several years--and we were both looking forward to discovering and exploring the place. So we used our free Thursday afternoon to visit his remarkable museum, which features works by the troubled Dutch artist--works of art which seem to mirror his life.

Vincent, who killed himself in 1890 at age 37, is best known for sunny, Impressionist canvases that vibrate and pulse with vitality. The museum's 200 paintings--which offer a virtual stroll through his work and life--were owned by Theo, Vincent's younger, art-dealer brother. Paintings were divided into five periods of his life--the Netherlands, Paris, Arles, St. Remy, and Auvers-sur-Oise.

The mix of his creative genius and his tumultuous life makes the museum as much a walk with Vincent as with his art. In fact, the paintings, arranged chronologically, leave a series of suicide notes and begin with some dark, gray canvases showing the hard, plain existence of the Dutch people--simple buildings, barren trees, and overcast skies--a world where it seems spring will never arrive.

"The Potato Eaters," painted in 1885, reflects a dark, cramped room lit only by a dim light and poor workers helping themselves to a steaming plate of potatoes. Van Gogh gave their heads "something like the color of a really dusty potato, unpeeled, of course." In line with the theory he was studying at the time, he obtained all his colors by mixing the primary colors red, yellow, and blue. The artist produced a large number of preparatory studies in the cottage of the peasant family that we see eating their meal here, but he made the final painting in his studio.

We really liked the displays and the very interactive audioguide. In fact, it was a SmartPhone-like device and while standing in front of a painting, we'd sometimes receive an email from Vincent. And if I could figure out how to open it....it was intriguing to read the information he provided about a painting or technique. Like the email about the "Courtesan" he painted in 1887.

In Van Gogh's day, many artists were keen collectors of Japanese prints, which presented them with a fresh way of looking at composition, the use of color, and perspective. In fact, Vincent and Theo built up a collection of their own Japanese prints. The "Courtesan" painting was based on a cover illustration for a magazine on Japanese art, using other models for the surrounding landscape which also displayed water plants, a frog, and a crane.

"The Bedroom" was painted in 1888--his actual bedroom in his "yellow house" in Arles--and this was the first version. The second version is in Chicago's Art Institute and the third, in Paris's Musee d'Orsay.

I really liked the openness of the museum, the bright wall colors--the same colors Vincent used--how the paintings were displayed, the general feel of the museum. I think Sam enjoyed it, as well.