Amsterdam Museums

We managed to get out the door and down to the Van Gogh museum by 9, and through there was a bit of a queue of people even more hard core or competitive than us, we were in within 10 minutes, and the press of people round the paintings was fairly good. If you shuffled a bit or hurried a bit you could get to commune with most paintings uninterrupted. It is a fantastic collection of his work, and seeing so much of it organised chronologically gives a sense of how much he developed. And the perseverance of the man is moving. It's a fatuous observation, but it is so sad he did not live to get some recognition. It was wonderful to see so many of the paintings as he painted them.

The Vincent industry is certainly doing well, churning out the merch. There are at least three stores within the museum packed with people buying sunflower pencil cases, almond blossom cups, Vincent calendars.

We were both uplifted and exhausted by the time we left. We limped home, buying a delicious baguette from the shop over the road, and lay low in the hotel for a couple of hours.

Weather has turned, and when we went out again, there were intermittent heavy showers and some mighty strong wind gusts. Along the streets there were lots of bikes and motor scooters blown over.

Anne wanted a low key afternoon so she went to look at some shops around the 9 Streets area, I went to do so reconnaissance on the train station for our early departure on Thursday, then headed over to the Maritime Museum.

Given the extensive and pivotal role of seafaring tin Dutch history, I thought the museum was pretty light on. It didn't really tell the story of any aspect of the maritime past in any way I could discern.

It did have a great collection of charts and atlases in display, including Blaeu's chart of the world, a fantastically detailed and illustrated world chart from 1664, which shows with great accuracy much of the coast of Australia.

There is also a fine gallery of maritime paintings - some minutely executed paintings of naval battles full of gruesome detail - and a marvelous collection of figureheads from various sailing craft.

But it was a disappointment overall. I was glad I hadn't persuaded Anne to come. I navigated my way back without any problem - the hub and spoke pattern of the city makes it way finding easy - and I got to admire some new areas. Some of the canal houses probably don't have a right angle anywhere, but they are very beautiful notwithstanding.

Soon after I got home, the sky darkened and it began to pour in earnest so we had dinner in the restaurant attached to the hotel, a bit pricey but good not to get soaked.

Tomorrow we plan to visit the Rijksmuseum early, and see how much energy we have left after that. But we feel we are getting better at Amsterdam - we've figured out better how the bicycle traffic works so it is more relaxing walking around, knowing where people will be coming from and how they will behave. Like this photo, note girl on back of bike being dinked, girl coming from opposite direction talking on phone, and chap on wrong side of road carrying multiple bags. All these are now familiar behaviours.