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Now that you’re settled into your friendly hotel let’s start the day with some artwork. Amsterdam is renowned for its art museums so a visit to the Rijksmuseum (State Museum) in the southern Museum Quarter is on the cards. Take trams 2,5,6,7 or 10 and alight at Stadhouderskade. You will see the imposing neo-gothic Rijksmuseum designed by PJH Cuypers, the same guy who planned the Centraal Station which you passed through on arriving into the city. The museum is split into sections containing the pre-Renaissance works which are mainly religious, the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age of the 17-18th centuries, Sculpture & Applied Arts, Asiatic Art and Prints & Drawings. You’ll be surprised at how many pieces you recognize including works by Frans Hals, Jan Vermeer, Jan Steen, Gerard ter Borch and Rembrandt. Visit the museum shop to pick up a keyring, fridge magnet or a rolled-up copy of a masterpiece you were unable to steal.
Just about 300m southwest of the above on Paulius Potterstraat is the Vincent Van Gogh Museum. Here you can marvel at some of the 200 paintings, 500 drawings and 850 letters which were lovingly preserved by his younger brother Theo as well as works by artist contemporaries such as Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. They start with his early sombre and dark work such as The Potato Eaters, then move to his time in Paris which is lighter in mood and brought View of Paris; on then to Arles where he moved in with his friend Gauguin for a while and painted the upbeat Sunflowers and Bedroom at Arles before cutting off his ear following a row with the former. After this he was in a mental asylum in St. Remy where was created the haunting Crows in the Wheatfield following which he shot himself and died, having sold only one painting during his lifetime and just as artistic acclaim was beckoning.
Are your feet killing you? Let’s hope not because we’re not finished. Just right next door is the Stedelijk Museum (City Museum) crammed with over 60,000 samples of modern art covering painting, sculpture, design, prints, drawing, photography and graphic art. Here you will meet Mondrian, Picasso, Kelly, Malevich, Jasper Johns, Man Ray and Chagall among many others.
You deserve a beer now so stop off in one of the many city bars for a locally-brewed Heineken before heading your weary way back to the hotel room to get ready for evening dinner. ©ArrowTours
