It's not quite Hollywood, but today was always going to be a different kind of day.
We started the day by heading towards the Jordan area of the city - a sort of Islington / Georgetown oasis of cute housing at unaffordable prices in the city. Close by is the Anne Frank house, which attracts crazy queues everyday but we didn’t stop, before heading around Jordaan towards the cultural quarter.
Yesterday was almost entirely devoted to the Rijksmuseum and quite rijghtly so - it is an amazing place worthy of much more time that we gave it. Today we paid MORE to visit the Van Gogh museum close by but sadly we can’t muster the same level of excitement - of course he was important, of course it was sad (killing yourself at 37 is definitely sad!) and of course some of his work is extraordinary, BUT worth more that yesterday’s splendid experience, no definitely not. Fortunately we had our pre-paid tickets in our iWallet (or whatever it’s called) so we strolled past the huge queue outside and walked straight in, down through the futuristic entrance to the basement before re-emerging in the older building to start our tour. Despite carefully (so they say) controlled numbers, it was heaving with people so we had to struggle to see everything as we passed through four floors and 37 salons of paintings, drawings, etchings and themed memorabilia and storylines.
We saw the sunflowers (ugly and mis-shapen) and the potato eaters (dark and odd) and many other well-known and lesser-known items, but after 90 minutes we’d exhausted our appetite for this and and headed, via the rather good bakery we’d found yesterday to buy lunch-time provender, to the park to sit and watch herons, parakeets and moore-hens as we feasted.
We had earlier missed the gay memorial so decided to look for it - when we eventually found it there was no wonder - loads of people waiting for Anne Frank house and river trips were sat on it quite possibly without even knowing what they were sat on. I’m not sure that the monument is for me, as the prejudice I experienced as a child a school was just from mindless idiots who didn’t know better in the eighties, indeed probably don’t now, and I’ve never had anything worse happen since, but it does matter to the many people around the world who still can’t live their life as they wish because of the terrible regime they live under. To them, the ones persecuted or executed for being gay it should be respected, not sat on like a bus stop seat!
Then we took an extended walk back through Jordaan, taking in different streets. before heading towards the former town hall now Royal Palace. Its history is interesting - built in 1665 it was town hall for a long time before the French stole Holland and in 1808 Napoleon installed his brother as king. Oddly the locals actually liked him and for a good while he was appreciated and loved. Not surprisingly Napoleon disagreed and that was the end of his kingship, but the Orange’s later took over and ever since have ruled happily here. The palace is no-where near as splendid as Buckingham Palace, but there are some lovely rooms particularly the enormous people’s hall.
Afterwards we decided to walk down to the cruise terminal to check out our boat, but although we could find nine river boats moored up, ours was not amongst them! A quick check on MarineTraffic showed that it was moored about three miles upstream, way beyond Haarlem. As we have a driver to take us the the boat tomorrow it really doesn’t matter but we were surprised it was so far out of town - until we realised there’s no obvious place to handle arrivals in town so it makes sense to do that elsewhere.
We then headed back towards town, cutting across some reclaimed land where the new Science Museum has been built - although main museum was closed by this time, it was too tempting not to check out the rooftop space and enjoy a beer and a sit amongst the families playing in the waterfalls and other water-based amusements as we looked over the rooftops of Amsterdam.
A quick trot back to the hotel to change and it’s off to the Hotel Intercontinental for dinner at La Rive. This turned out to be an amazing place fully deserving of its Michelin Rosette and we had a great evening, starting with canapés and amuse on the waterside terrace before returning indoors for the remaining six courses.
As we left we watched as a film crew were shooting in the marbled lobby of the hotel, but we resisted the temptation to join the actors in the action.
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