Amsterdam Day 2

We woke up around 9am and had a breakfast in bed. We had crackers, smoked cheese, and meat. It was quite yummy and Dutch cheese is the best! We got around and headed to meet with Hunter's family to go to the Rijksmuseum, a very popular art museum. They were having a special Rembrandt exhibit!

On our way to meet, we stopped at a supermarket called Dirk's and bought some cookies and also got some cash. The ATMs are really expensive here when using a Canadian card, but the market was able to give me €50 and only charged 15 cents rather than €5+. So if you're ever in Amsterdam and your bank doesn't have any partner ATMs, check out Dirk's as they were helpful! PS they also have cheap Ben and Jerrys ice cream!

We eventually made it to the apartment hotel Hunters family was staying at and hung out until they were ready to go. They are also on the 4th floor with no elevator and have many many steep stairs to climb, I think possibly more than are at our AirBnB. The apartment is really nice though!

We took a tram to the museum and met Bailey at the entrance. We bought our tickets online through Klook. Klook is an awesome app that gives great deals for attractions and much more all over the world. We've used it in Singapore and Australia and absolutely love it. Often you get better deals than buying them on site or if you bundle attractions. I highly recommend it!

The entrance to the Rijksmuseum

Hayden and Isabel

It was a little windy outside (Hayden, Isabel, Stormy, Hunter)

  

We started out by looking at The Night Watch exhibit. It had the very famous painting by Rembrandt and dozens of other Dutch masters. There were massive classical paintings as big as a room! Hunter really liked a painting of the battle of Waterloo that was 38 feet wide with larger than life figures. There were also medieval works, all the way through the modern era. An exhibit had tons of historic model ships along with cannons used by the Dutch East India company in their colonies. One of the model ships had an entire miniature crew of holographic workers which was pretty cool. The museum did a lot of blending modern technology with historic exhibits. A lot of the works had some amazing history and had changed hands numerous times in battles. There was stuff all the way through world war two propoganda posters and a chess set with airplanes for pieces owned by a nazi leader.

Beautiful stained glass just before entering The Night Watch exhibit

Van Gogh's self portrait

This was called the WombTomb - you can get inside it

Chess set owned by Heinrich Himmler - a prominent Nazi leader

Propaganda poster

Latern slides

After we finished in the museum we headed outside to a Christmas market in the Museum Platz. There was an ice rink and many different vendors for food and goods. We walked around, but didn't see anything overly exciting. Waiting by the fire pits was lovely in the colder windy weather.

We decided to next go to the FoodHallen for dinner. It is a food court in a large warehouse that has other stores too. Hunter and I have actually been here before, but when we came it was mostly closed. Hunter and I shared a plate of calamari, tapas, and fries with some sauce on them that was really good. We also got bitterballen, a Dutch meat-based snack. I liked it a lot, but it does have a weird texture.

FoodHallen

Our dinner

After dinner we headed to Hortus Botanicus, a botanical garden, for their night special. It was lit up with Christmas lights and we got to walk around some of the greenhouses. I would love to go back during the day to see and read about more of their plants. We also got warme chocolademelk (hot chocolate) with whip cream after walking around. It was very tasty!

Since it was quite late, Hunter and I headed back to our AirBnB. We stopped at an Albert Heijn just before it closed and got some breakfast type foods for the morning. When we finally got back to our apartment, we were exhausted. We had walked about 13.5 miles and climbed 27 flights of stairs!

December 21, 2018