The Hermitage Museum & Rembrandt House

Wednesday, April 29

Hermitage Museum- This museum is the Amsterdam branch of the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, Russian. The special exhibit that is on loan from St Petersburg is called "Alexander, Napoleon and Josephine." The exhibit consisted of paintings, clothing, military artifacts and information about the ties between Russian and the Netherlands. The artwork was beautiful, but pictures could not be taken in the exhibit. These pictures are from the Hermitage website.

Napolean & Alexander 1

A rare painting of a large dog.

Van Gogh Museum

Tuesday, April 28

We went to the Van Gogh museum today. The paintings on the first floor were of his self-portraits. The second and third floors were the story of his life. These floors included not only his painting but the paintings of his friends and colleagues- Monet, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others.

Picture taking was not allowed in the museum. The pictures below were taken at other museums
or from the Van Gogh website.

Self-portrait

Sunflowers

Self portrait

After the museum we went in search of the Albert Cuypmarkt. This is Amsterdam's largest street market. You can buy anything from food (fish, cheese, fruit, vegetables, etc.) to used clothing, fabric, junk, etc. We picked up some vegetables and fish for supper.

Lots of flowers for sale

King's Day- Koningsdag

King's Day is the day the entire country celebrates the birthday of King Willem-Alexander, April 27. Thousands of peope have been arriving in Amsterdam since Friday night to help celebrate his birthday. The parties go on into the wee hours of the morning. Orange is the national color (the color of the Royal Family, The House of Orange) so everyone wears orange.

There is a giant, city wide free flea market.  Anyone can set out a table and sell what ever they would like and the main streets are blocked off from traffic. We headed to the sale at 8:00 and lasted to about  noon when we decided to take a break and rest.

In the afternoon there was a canal boat parade with 100's of boats. All sorts of boats filled with people traveled around the canals. Music blasting and beers in hand as they partied in the boats. 

Around 3:00 in the afternoon we headed home as the streets were filled with people and it was beginning to get harder to keep track of each other and push our way through the crowd.

Exhausted, but we had a great time walking around the city and enjoying the day's happenings. 

Home to our little house in North Amsterdam, to enjoy a glass of wine, listen to the birds, and savor the smell of the flowers, apple tree and liliacs that are in bloom.

Adults and children work together to sell their items.

Every available space was used for selling.

Anything that floated carried a group of celebrating people.

We supported the children street musicians with a donation. She was a 6 year old drummer.

An upcoming rock star and her brother on the drums.

Most people stood up in the boats, as most boats were working boats and didn't have seats.