Van Gogh

Last Saturday we decided to visit the Van Gogh museum. They have a great deal on their website where you can purchase tickets and use them anytime between now and the end of the year, and you can even print them out and miss the huge queue. You can also do that if you have the museum card that I've mentioned before.

Van Gogh certainly had an impressive range -- he does have his own museum after all so you'd hope he had created a lot of work -- but personally I think his variety is what really makes his art stand out. My favourites are still the well-known portraits and Sunflowers, but it was good to see a lot of others that were equally interesting.

Van Gogh's work takes up the entire 1st floor, but you can see them all in about half an hour to 45 minutes unless you really want to stand in front of each piece for 5 minutes. The 2nd and 3rd floors contain a wide selection of works by some other artists, some of which were his friends.

On minor minus was the layout of the museum itself. I don't understand why museums don't have art displayed at a 30 degree angle (or so) a little higher up, so that a crowd of people can stand in front of it and not get in each others way. I'll ask my Dad to design the museum I want to build some day and it will be the first! People might get sore necks but at least it'll be worth it for enjoying the art!

Schiphol Airport

Schiphol airport is so good. It's huge but well sign-posted and there are time indicators on the signs so that you know how long you'll need to leave to get to your gate. There's lots of room everywhere and there aren't the normal queue bottlenecks that seem to plague other airports especially at passport control or customs.

But the one cool thing I noticed this time is that you can go to the Rijksmuseum while at the airport! It's on the Holland Boulevard which is behind passport control and between the E and F Piers. This mini-museum has ten works by Golden Age Dutch masters from the Rijksmuseum's collection and it changes a number of times each year. Well worth a visit if you've got a little extra time while waiting for your flight.

‘Coffee’ Shops and the Red-light District

You tell people you’re moving to Amsterdam and the first thing they say is “Oh I see, you’re going for the ‘coffee’ shops and red-light district, wink wink nudge nudge”. Monty Python reference aside, while this is what Amsterdam is well known for, once you get here you realise it’s actually a small part of the whole.

When my girlfriend and I first visited we managed to walk though the red-light district without even noticing (we then back-tracked just to satisfy our curiosity, but it turned out to be mostly full of stoned or drunk English men stumbling from one window to the next). The main area itself is quite small and easy to avoid, although there are smaller mini versions dotted around the city which you can accidentally wander into but it’s all fairly tame by today’s standards.

The coffee shops are of course everywhere like cafes in most other cities but more often than not people seem to just be there for the coffee oddly enough. So one of the nice things about Amsterdam is that you can really make it what you want it to be, I suppose that comes from it being such a tolerant and accepting nation. If you're really that way inclined you can of course skip the coffee shops and just DIY as shown in the photo.

One thing I found out recently is that The Netherlands has more great museums per square foot than anywhere else in the world! And for 40 euros you can buy a Museum Card (Museumkaart) which lets you into 29 of them in Amsterdam (and hundreds more elsewhere) as many times as you like for a year. You can buy it at some of the museums or at Uitburo at Leidseplein 26. If you’re already living in Amsterdam then you can buy it online at the link above.