After yesterday’s strike outs, I would say we hit a home run today. Bus timing was perfect. We choose the MOCO Museum (Modern and Contemporary) and the crowd is very light. The museum has art from Andy Warhol, Bansky, Kusama and a number of other artists. Many of the artists started out as street artists. Graffiti guys with a message. All very cool and a different take on an art museum. There were several infinity boxes to view. These immersion rooms feel a lot like the ones by Kusama that we say in Melbourne but they were done by a Dutch artist duo, Studio Irma.
We wander another section of downtown, trying to stay out of the tourist zone. Many cool residential lanes and squares. A flea market, selling mostly second hand clothes, takes up one square. Every once in a while we pop out of a street and we are back in the tourist zone, so we pop back into another lane.
Through our trip we have been trying Dutch and Belgium foods. Today, Murray tries more Poffertjes, Dutch batter cakes the size of a toonie pancake. They are eaten with Nutella and icing sugar. At the flea market, I eat loempia, Vietnamese spring rolls, and my lunch is complete. The loempia are like veggie spring rolls on steroids, about three times the size of a spring rolls we would get at home. Large and delicious!
Murray and I have been talking about how it is so crowded with tourists in Amsterdam. Our last day in the big city, a Thursday, proves to be no less crowed that a weekend day. We also found Antwerp, Brussels and Bruges just as busy, a lot of the crowd in all the places must have been tourists like us. A small quiet town is much preferable, in our view. I think our future travels may have to be more on the unbeaten track.
