Bye Bye Amsterdam

Today I must say goodbye to Amsterdam and leave for London. Mom left this morning to go back to the states. I was planning on walking around and windowshopping today, but it is pouring, so internet cafe it is! On Tuesday we went to the Rijksmuseum (pronounced rikes (like bikes) museum) and the VanGogh museum. I was completely blown away by the VanGogh museum; he only painted for 10 yrs of his life and created amazing works. The most impressive part for me is the variety of painting styles he did. Some were very true to life with smooth lines that looked like a pictures, then he did a lot of pointilism (lots of dots to make an image) and some others were crazy colors (green skies, etc.) with globs of paint making the picture literally 3D. My favorite painting of his was the famous yellow sunflowers.
http://z.about.com/d/painting/1/0/Q/T/1/SueBond-19VanGoghSunflowers.jpg

The Rijksmuseum was also very impressive, although only a small fraction of the museum was open. This place is almost as big as the Louvre, but they are doing major reconstruction this year so all of the famous works were moved into a few rooms and the rest closed off to the public. Honestly, I think it made the museum better. The Louvre was amazing, but completely exhausting the walk around. But here you got to see all the stuff you would come to see with minimal tourist collapsing. So many of the paintings here had such great detail in each face it was practically better than a photo. There were also a number of Rembrants and Vermeers (although not the Girl with the Pearl Earring). It was a little creepy to see the portaits painted of children because this was a time when children were just see as mini-adults who needed that pesky original sin beaten out of them. So all the children looked like sickly dwarves as painted.

Tuesday was a beautiful day so after the museums we strolled around Vondelpark for a while. We found that as you walk further into the park it becomes very beautiful (not like the entrance we had seen before). There are lots of walking and biking paths, benches, students tanning and playing tennis, and at the back a large childrens playground with a huge wading pool complete with fountain. We sat on a bench for a while and worked on the puzzles in the US Today (their crosswords are completely lame btw).

Wednesday was a lazy day since we had done all the touristy things we wanted to here. I slept in pretty late and then we just wandered around town along the canals. We went to the Alfred Cuyp street market which was much bigger than we thought it was. It stretched for about 3 blocks on both sides. It was a fun market and sold anything you could think to buy: fresh orange juice, bras, bike locks, toothpaste, fresh flowers, raw fish, etc. Mom got a nice pashmina (I bought one in Paris, they are very popular here) and we sampled some just-made french fries..mmmm..... At the end of the day we went to an Indonesian resturant (Amsterdam has tons of international food) and both had a mini-rice table. Basically it's an assortment of a bunch of different Indonesian dishes. It's good we got the mini because it was huge as it came. There were pickled vegetables, dried coconut with peanuts, a delicous shredded beef dish, chicken leg in spicy suace, a boiled egg in the same spicy sauce and chicken sate. We went there on suggestion of Brian's uncle who I am going to stay with while in London. I am hoping either today or tomorrow to get my pictures posted and captioned so some of these posts will make a little more sense!