Rose Garden (Amsterdam day 5)

Good morning dear reader. This Saturday morning saw Amsterdammers walking, jogging, cycling, playing netball, volleyball and soccer, doing yoga and any number of other unseen activities. That's not quite true. We did witness all of those activities in Vondelpark but it was closer to lunch than to breakfast. The locals we spotted this morning were all working, cleaning up from last night's festivities. The summer holiday is coming to an end this weekend apparently.

No reason and out of context. I just like birds.

Today is our first true lay-day of the trip because we have nothing organised except dinner at Momo. Why there? Well, Amex offered me money back on an overseas dining experience and Momo is all of 5 minutes walk from our hotel.

We slept late, well a little later and walked back to Café Luxembourg for breakfast. A walk through one of the bar/restaurant areas in the morning before it has re-opened, or before the street cleaners have through, can be confronting. I'm always amused that Paris is constantly criticised for being "dirty" and yet we have found Amsterdam to be less clean. Perhaps the street cleaning squads that work tirelessly have made the population complacent, but the morning detritus of broken bottles, discarded cans, fast food packaging, cigarette butts and more could not be missed by anyone who was out and about before 9am.

Random picture to break up the text. It's in Vondelpark. Nope. No idea.

Anyway, on to Café Luxembourg because I espied on their menu, when we were there yesterday, croque monsieur et madame. Who can resist ham and cheese and bechamel sauce? Not this little black duck as Daffy used to say. 

As you might imagine, dear reader, there was no trouble getting a table at this time of day. We were seated under the awning directly in front of the restaurant window in Paris style seating. The espresso shot to commence the day was welcome. My croque monsieur was as enjoyable as Jayne's croque madame. Ick. Egg. And the second coffee, a long espresso, capped a great breakfast.

The traffic and passing parade was commensurately reduced, given the time of day. But there were still the amusing antics of bike riders and pedestrians. A local homeless person walked unsteadily toward us, approached our table and leaned in, mumbling something in French I think, before being scared away by one of the wait staff. That was about as exciting as it got. Then off to Vondelpark to find the rose garden. Unlike the 1970 song by Lynn Anderson, we were promised a rose garden and I was determined to find it.

The man after whom the park is named.

The walk to the garden is a common path for us. However, the sights today were not. It's Saturday and all those bucks and hens parties from the UK had arrived over night and were wandering the streets of Amsterdam in hormone fuelled packs. Or were merely attempting to find their accommodation. It rekindled memories of Budapest. I can't imagine too many people on the continent are sad about Brexit. I don't know where this tradition commenced or how it has grown to what it is today, but cheap, trashy and tawdry is all I see. No pictures. I don't wish to encourage them.

Not a rose garden in sight

Did you guess? It's a fountain.

A home for the bees.

We walked one complete side of the park and refused to yield a rose garden. We paused for a few kodak moments, like the cat in the shrub. 

What are you doing puss? There are no birds there.

I watched it and I still have no idea what it was doing. Around the bottom of the park and heading for home, there were fountains and flowers and statues and finally a rose garden. It was well past its best, but you get the concept from the pictures. It would have looked quite spectacular a couple of weeks ago.

The other aspect of today was a new spectator sport. Our room overlooks a rent-a-bike establishment. I'm not sure who has the most fun, the people that work there or Jayne and me. Watching people observing the ruling, "it's like riding a bike" and then find that riding a bike is not so easy 40 years later has been a hoot. This morning, child gets on bike and rides off. Dad gets on bike, pedals, gets the death wobbles (at low speed) and falls over. Gets up, squares his shoulders, looks at his wife and wheels away very unsteadily. I've seen drunks negotiate a better line. Then mum, feeling superior and smirking away at her husband's indignity rides off with the stand down. She almost comes a cropper too, stops, kicks up the stand and pedals away. I'm just sad I can't see these people hit the cycleways of Amsterdam, the most unforgiving of paths. This scene, or something similar, was repeated with monotonous regularity. If only the hotel had a café or bar looking out onto this area. I'd be there as much as possible.

And so to dinner and Momo. Conceptually not our gig. It is certainly aimed at a demographic from which we have graduated. That said the food was amazing. We appreciated everything we ate, loved some, enjoyed some, thought some was next level. We didn't agree on every dish because we have different tastes. The sushi tempura prawn was next level, I could eat it all night. Jayne's favourite was the beef skewer. Service was attentive and helpful. If only we could transport this to a restaurant where there wasn't another hen's night party in the room or a DJ playing mindless music ... yeah, ok, I'll go to bed now.

Until tomorrow.

Amsterdam (Amsterdam day 3)

No, dear reader, I'm not repeating myself - it's another post about Amsterdam, this time accompanied by a song of the same name. Amsterdam by Crowded House, that great Australian (oh, alright, Kiwi) band from 2010. Why? Well, because today we visited the Van Gogh Museum, something our Neil didn't manage to do in the song.

[Interjection - this is a long post, get a drink.]

On our fact finding mission yesterday, we discovered a little shop that sold French style pastries and Segafredo coffee. Now, dear reader, any country that translates the word 'latte', you know, coffee with milk, into, "wrong coffee" is a winner in my eyes. So we assumed the coffee would also be good. That was our first destination for the day. Happily, we were not disappointed, aside from the coffee being served in disposable cups.

The ham and cheese croissant was a slight departure from the norm, but then a ham and cheese croissant is a slight departure from a croissant. Here the croissant is not sliced, with the ham and cheese inserted and then toasted/grilled. In Holland, the ham and cheese sit on top of the croissant and it is grilled. Whatever. It hit the spot, on top of an excellent shot of espresso and provided enough sustenance for us to make it to dinner (yes we are back to our 2 meal a day travel regime, after the culinary excesses of the cruise).

Juxtaposition of old and new.

On the way to meeting our guide we made a slight, but free of charge, deviation through the gardens of the Rijksmuseum. The carefully manicured gardens contain sculptures, old and new, as well as fountains and places just to rest and enjoy the surroundings. And people watch of course.

Cool fountain.

The meeting place for our guide, Jacopo, was outside a toilet block, between the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. Now, dear reader, please stop smirking, you know that is not a usual haunt of mine. Stop laughing. Anyway, the building also houses a café (that's a pub over here), so it is a respectable meeting point. Isn't it?

No, this was not our meeting a place. I just liked the concept.

Jacopo was punctual and identified himself and we did the usual introductions, quickly establishing we were not American or British. I really must change the way I speak, it's embarrassing. We chatted as we walked the few minutes to the entry of the museum, skipped the line and deposited my backpack into a locker.

Self-portrait - Vincent, not me.

By the time we had reached the entrance hall, we had discussed the pronunciation of Van Gogh, nope, not going there, and the brutalist architectural style of the building that houses the permanent collection. As opposed to the more recent light and airy entrance hall, designed by a Japanese architect.

Another self-portrait - no, he's not left handed. It's a mirror image.

From this point, it becomes a situation of where too much information is barely enough, to paraphrase H.G. Nelson (no? Google it with Rampaging Roy Slaven). Don't get me wrong, we loved every minute of the tour. Jacopo was brilliant and passionate and knowledgeable, but we can't synthesise so much information into such a small space.

Vincent painted by contemporary and friend John Peter Russell

That said, I'll give Jayne the keyboard and she can provide what information she feels relevant. I'm pretty sure I have enough photos to illustrate her words.

Not a Van Gogh, but an inspiration to him.

We very quickly established that the master signed his paintings 'Vincent' because nobody could pronounce his surname  correctly. After that, we headed into the exhibition that commences with a series of self-portraits that illustrated his tortured view of himself. This was accompanied by a discussion of various possible underlying diagnoses that have been postulated to contextualise the diversity of his own facial representations. Regardless of how he was feeling about himself at any given time, his eyes were always, to say the least, portrayed as unsettling.

Loved this, one of his early works.

His childhood was framed by a religious, disciplinarian father and a mother who constantly reminded him of the fact that he was a 'replacement child'. That is, he was named Vincent after his older brother, who was still-born, and just to make sure he never forgot it, she regularly took him to the cemetery to visit the grave of his constantly eulogised namesake. Cool and normal.

Unknown. Nah, it's a self-portrait.

Some health issues (mental and physical) arose from lifestyle choices - smoking like a chimney, drinking absinthe like water and living on stale crusts of bread, the logical order of expenditure priority for an impoverished painter on a limited budget, after art material costs came out.

The Japanese influence was easy to see in the gold paint.

The myth of Vincent lies in his meteoric maturation as an artist, over less than 10 years as an active painter; a man who started off selling art with his younger brother, Theo, but instead advised clients what not to buy because he thought what was on offer was rubbish. He decided to paint because he thought he could do a better job, refused to take instruction from experts and, through prolific production of paintings, steered his own short course to artistic immortality.

Vincent's bedroom in Arles.

Through only a small sample of his works, the exhibition traces Vincent's development of his distinctive technique and style. It includes, apart from the frequently disturbing self portraits, iconic works like The Irises, The Sunflowers and The Potato Eaters.

The Irises.

This catalogue chronicles the physical and mental decline of the artist as he lurches through unrequited loves, rejection by his peers, self-imposed isolation, a fraught friendship with Paul Gauguin that ends in the infamous slicing off of his own ear and the development of a condition, akin to epilepsy, that may or may not have been caused by lead poisoning, as he was known to lick his paintbrush while he applied lead based paints to his creations.

A painting from the asylum.

In Vincent's last 2 years of life, he was hospitalised due to increasingly erratic behaviour and mental health concerns and, in this time of enforced rehabilitation, he produced over 200 works in 365 days!

His final work.

He finally died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen, sustained in a wheat field, which is generally considered to have been a case of suicide, although the method of shooting was highly unusual. There is an unverified alternative version that he was accidentally shot by 2 boys who found their father's pistol and were playing around with it in the field.

After listening to Jacopo we decided that, in our world, Vincent would have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Perhaps the last word should go to Don MacLean and his song about the artist, Vincent.

Goodness, I'm exhausted after reading that. Maybe Jayne should write the blog all the time and I will look after the pictures.

Anyway, after looking at the gift shop offerings and knowing Vincent would not approve of any purchase, we left the museum in search of another landmark park, the Vondelpark. It wasn't really a search, we knew where it was, we just didn't know what to expect. It was lunchtime(ish) so there were lots of rabid cyclists trying to kill pedestrians, but aside from that, it looked like a regular park. That last part isn't true either, there is still much to explore, but we decided to have a beer instead and contemplate the afternoon, or what remained of it.

As expected the service was, well, not service. You needed to QR the menu to discover there was no table service. To the bar I go where the beer taps are all in Dutch. Not criticising. Why would they be in any other language? However, assistance from the staff? Nope. "I'd like to get a couple of beers," was met with a blank look. Not giving me anything. So, I ordered the first tap. It was an ale, not pale, and was presented, not served, with a head bigger than a cabbage. I walked, with the frothy beers in hand while the POS machine was yet to confirm my purchase.

The beer was good, the shade better, the spectacle of watching people interpret, understand and use the unisex toilet was priceless.

It's a canal cruise, so here is a canal bridge.

Then it was onto a canal cruise. So I could comment on the European tourists who have no manners, I'm looking at you Germany, but I won't. It was blisteringly hot and there was precious little air flow, despite being on the water. We kept a watchful eye for children with water balloons. Otherwise it was an overpriced, must do, Amsterdam event.

That is actually a swing on top of that building.

Once we stepped aside from the German stampede to leave the boat (seriously, you'd think they'd won the war - too soon?), we navigate our way to a restaurant recommended by our Lonely Planet guide book. First fail for the Amsterdam edition. The restaurant in question was not open from 10am until whenever as the guide had said. It wasn't opening until 5:30pm.

Not all the barges were in peak condition.

Slightly miffed, we sidled back out into the scorching afternoon sun, walked to friendly terrain and found a Greek restaurant. A bottle of Italian wine - seriously, you expected retsina? And a series of starter plates later, it was time to cross the canal back to the hotel.

Willow trees are big over here.

Until tomorrow.

ps: Jayne added to her Pandora collection yesterday but it was such a mundane event we forgot to comment on it. It is a windmill. Who'd have thought.