Our day starts with a missed bus. Then on the second bus a missed stop, strike two. Strike three is our visit to the Van Gogh Museum. We take away two things from our visit. First, it is ridiculously crowded in the museum even though there are timed entries. I do not get close to any of the paintings. There is always somebody standing in front of each one. The people are 4 or 5 deep at every major painting. After our time in small towns and other cities, this was hard to take. Second, Van Gogh is known for a handful of famous paintings – sunflowers, irises, the potato eaters and self portraits, but he has so many other paintings in varied styles. My favourite is one of a tree in bloom. It is light and airy and bright.
The Concertgebouw, which is very close to the Van Gogh Museum, has free concerts on Wednesdays at 12:30. Murray knew about these concerts but last night when he checked online there were no more tickets available. Once out of the museum, we walk over to the concert hall to see if the venue had kept any tickets back for random walk in visitors. After talking to various people, we find out there is a possibility people will not show and those seats are made available for those who wait. As folks are going in, a couple comes up to us and asks if we need tickets. They have two extra tickets that they offer to us for our entry. This is the second random act of kindness that we have experienced on our trip.
We find a seat in the ‘Small Hall’, a richly decorated mini version of the main concert venue. The Cong Quartet plays a Debussy piece. The concert is 30 minutes. They are all excellent musicians and the music is captivating.
The canals in Amsterdam seem to be an integral of the city fabric, with many boats and house boats moored along the banks. In Bruges and Ghent, the canals are more like a reminder of the city’s past economic boom times but are now just a remnant of what they used to be and more of a novelty of the tourists.
We wander outside the tourist zone and walk residential lanes looking at the houses. We muse about living in such a small space and decide we would have to downsize quite a bit to do it.
