|
|
|
the Rijksmuseum
Wednesday, November 12 2025
location: Cabin 102, MS Grace, cruise ship port north of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
We had to get up a little earlier this morning because the staff on the boat needed to feed us breakfast and get us out of our rooms so they could be set up for the next group to go on a river boat cruise, one that would be eating many more chunks of slaughtered animals. This morning as we sat one last time with Kelly and Brian, I had my usual coffee and sandwiches made from good German rolls and increasingly-tough strips of faux bacon. (Last night Celia had talked about puncturing the roof of her mouth with the sharp corner of a piece of bacon, which seems to be the same bacon from earlier breakfasts that just keeps getting reheated.) Then there was the usual long goodbye, though for much of it I was alone in the entrance area of the boat while Gretchen was down the hall in Kelly & Brian's cabin. While down there, she ran into a slightly-annoying older British couple (though maybe it's just that we don't like looking at the thick tufts of hair sticking out of each of his nostrils). They mentioned they were taking an Uber to their hotel in central Amsterdam, and Gretchen asked if we could ride with them. If we could, this would solve a logistical problem that had us somehow taking a train and then walking with our backpacks through Amsterdam's infamous Red Light District.
After saying goodbye mostly just to the Swissies and then walking with Kelly and Brian from where the boat was docked to a street, Gretchen and I caught the Uber with the slightly-annoying British couple. The Uber in this case was a Tesla, and the front seat smelled of cigarettes. We rode got out with the slightly-annoying couple at their hotel, said goodbye, and then began a surprisingly long walk to our hotel (it was at least two miles, and my backpack was pretty heavy). The landscape we walked through, though, was beautiful, featuring more fairytale buildings, canals, and lots and lots of bicycles. We happened upon one street that was being repaved in brick for several blocks and marveled at how much effort it required.
Along the way, I had to piss, and after doing that in construction site, my soon filled up again, and I realized that part of the reason my bladder filled so quickly was that I also had to poop and my large intestines were pressing on my bladder. I could tell my need to poop was not a particularly healthy one, as there were some panging cramps associated with it. Let me tell you, walking with a heavy backpack across a big city without really knowing its scale while needing to explosively make use of a toilet is not a recipe for happiness, so it was good that Gretchen never paused to look at the sights she found striking (and there were many).
At long last, we made it to our destination, the Dikker & Thijs Hotel. It was way too early to check in, but the hotel had a very nice lounge (complete with immaculate bathrooms, soon to be slightly less so) that we were told we could relax in. The lounge even had a free coffee maker, though I had to remember that, unlike on the MS Grace, the cappuccinos would not be vegan. So I stuck with shots of espresso. First though, I had to make use of that bathroom.
We ended up hanging out in that lounge for over an hour, mostly playing Spelling Bee the whole time on our phones. When the woman from the desk came to announce our room was ready, that was amazing news, but we could've easily hung out in that lounge the way we had been doing for another hour.
Our room was spacious, had a bathtub, and overlooked a street with a canal running down the middle of it, giving us something of a complete Amsterdam experience. We hung out in room for a little while, but ultimately needed to begin our Amsterdam day, which would include a visit to the Rijksmuseum at 2:00pm (a place so popular that one needs to make an appointment). At around noon, we set out with the idea of getting lunch somewhere. A close-by option was a vegan Doner place called Karma Kebab, but when we got there, we found the door locked. When I tried to open the door, a cranky guy inside came out and shopsplained to me that when the door is locked, it means the establishment is closed. It seemed odd for a restaurant to be closed at noon, but then an Australian woman sitting at a café across the street told us that Karma Kebab is open late, so they don't really do the lunch thing. This meant we had to look for another place to eat, a task made difficult by the fact that Amsterdam (unlike other, significantly less-civilized places) does not have public WiFi and we'd allowed the eSim in Gretchen's phone to lapse. (Without WiFi, we couldn't just load another one either.)
We ended up strolling southwestward from the Rijksmuseum, doing our best to stay out of bike lanes where possible while walking to other vegan establishments with locations preloaded on Gretchen's phone. We walked several blocks to one place that turned out to be closed, then walked through a market to a vegan Asian place that just seemed too weird (and perhaps too Japanese; Gretchen doesn't really like Japanese food). I'd said something about just wanting some vegan junk food, and, coincidentally, there was a place called Vegan Junk Food Bar within easy walking distance. The weather was fairly warm and sunny, so we sat out in front across from a single woman dining alone. What we ordered was, essentially, vegan doner wraps with fries. I also ordered a very good IPA, the first good beer I'd had on this whole trip. Gretchen didn't really like her wrap, I wasn't sure why, so I ended up eating most of hers as well as mine. My only complaint was that they were extremely greasy, and when I wasn't watching, a bunch of grease dribbled out of mine onto my trousers (I was wearing my purple ones, the same ones I was wearing when I was recently fired), and I was unable to properly extricate the grease using the cleanup technology I had at my disposal. This meant I would be walking around the Rijksmuseum with a big dark grease stain on my right thigh. You could tell Vegan Junk Food Bar is a cool place because one of the customers inside the restaurant was there with two enormous dogs, including a Rottweiler.
After lunch, Gretchen wanted to get the taste of that wrap our of her mouth for some reason (again, I don't know why), but when we went into a coffee shop, we found they had oat milk but not decaf. So she had to suck on a candy instead.
The Rijksmuseum is a huge sprawling building, and a work of art in of itself. We checked in, entered its cavernous atrium (which was probably an outdoor plaza in the past), and then a woman working there greeted us and gave us her idea for the best way to explore the museum. She told us we should start on the second floor and see the museum's most famous painting, Rembrandt's The Night Watch and then gradually come down from there. That seemed like a good idea. So off we went.
When we stepped into the first gallery, we were greeted by a large photographic reproduction of The Night Watch. This was to prepare us for the real thing, which was, at this time, set back some distance behind a glass wall while restorations are being made to it from a scaffold in front of it. Nobody was on that scaffold when we arrived, though before leaving the floor, we saw a woman there doing something to a parch of the painting on its left side that seemed to be covered with a hazy film. From there, we looked at a good collection of Rembrandts and even a fair number of Vermeers, as well as amazingly lifelike still lifes executed by, in some cases, women artists we'd never heard of.
We then went clockwise around the exhibits on the second floor, marveling in some cases at paintings that didn't exactly speak to us æsthetically. I noticed that in some of the paintings of large groups of peasants (done sort of in the Bruegel style), their faces all kind of looked the same.
After spending a long time on that floor, we took a break to have oat milk cappuccinos in the biggest of the museum's café. This didn't do quite enough to recharge my batteries, but nevertheless we then went up to the first floor, skipping most of the art from the early 19th Century (like Waterloo) because it doesn't much interest us, eventually ending up with the museums four Van Goghs (there aren't his best) as well as a smattering of other relatively modern artists we both like. (There was, for example, a Monet that seemed to showcase his talents nicely.)
We realized we'd somehow missed the Goya, and when we finally found it, it was in the part of the museum we'd hurried through earlier. And it wasn't exactly Saturn Devouring His Son.
Before leaving the museum, Gretchen spent a fair amount of time buying postcards in the gift shop. I needed to take a load off, so I thought I could get away with sitting on the part of the steps that was just outside the hand rail. But it wasn't long before a staffer (the same woman who had told us how best to tour the museum) came over to politely explain that I couldn't sit there.
Back at the hotel, I took a nice hot bath and Gretchen did all her usual phone-based chores. It would've been easy to fall asleep, but somehow we rallied and went out to get dinner, returning to Karma Kebab. A different guy was working when we arrived, and he was perfectly friendly. We both ordered doner pitas made somehow with breaded & fried celeriac as the meat substitute. It was pretty good, and there was plenty of it, but I didn't like it quite as much as what I'd had for lunch. I was feeling unusually thirsty, but the only beer options were non-alcoholic, so I opted for a kombucha that could've passed for a soft drink. While we were there, the guy who'd been mean to us earlier showed up, but it seemed like he was doing deliveries or something, so he wasn't there long. Gretchen struck up a few brief conversations, including with one of the customers, so it felt like a successful European dinner outing by the time we were done.
Back in the hotel, I'd thought of something that needed correcting in the various new database relationships in my ESP8266 Remote Control system. So I made some tweaks. I also remotely ran the generator at the cabin for a bit, as it seemed like the cabin's battery was nearing depletion, perhaps because of snow.
The MS Grace after I'd disembarked this morning. Click to enlarge.
A greenhouse that is part of the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
A cat in a painting in the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
A pastoral painting in the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
A creepy painting in the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
A lot of ass in a painting in the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
An impressive still life in the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
A woman on a scaffold cleans Rembrandt's The Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?251112 feedback
previous | next |
