Final week Holland - Day 5.

Final week Holland - Day 5. Amsterdam! The city of bikes, canals, wonderful narrow and tall houses and lots and lots of people. For our final excursion we headed off to Amsterdam, primarily to go to the Rijksmuseum so the children could experience viewing some of the wonderful paintings from the grand old masters of dutch art, notably Rembrant, Johannes Vermeer, Van Gogh, with the Naval scenes by William van der Velde of particular interest to the boys. Even the still life paintings were remarkable and the paintings of people with the play of light and color made them fascinating to view. We were in awe of the talents/skills the painters had.  There were helpful cards full of information to help us understand what to look for and the symbolism involved.

Following the museum we took a canal tour of the city which was a very calm and relaxing way to view the highlights of Amsterdam without being assailed by hordes of people, or having to put up with (it seemed like) every second shop billowing out clouds of marijuana smoke or selling drug paraphernalia.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city with a rich heritage, and the flowers, multitudes of bikes parked up at every conceivable spot and the row houses - some of which were on quite a lean(!)  made it a most interesting visit.

Wonderful sights to see walking down the streets of Amsterdam

Just a few of the amazing paintings on display, most notably the Night Watch by Rembrant.

Olivia in front of a painting she particularly liked.
(She has lost yet another tooth - I think she has left them all over Europe!😁)






There were a number of naval battle scenes by William van der Velde, this was an amazing model of one of the ships depicted.

All set to go on our boat tour. 

It was a bit cooler today which made for a change to the heat we have been having.

Cruising through the canals was definitely the most relaxing way to enjoy the beautiful city, the narrow buildings were so delightfully "Amsterdam" some dating back to the 1500's!!  You can tell in which era each building went up by the type of gable it has (ie stepped, bell shaped, straight...).