The Netherlands
After a lovely time in the Azores I decided to meet my friend Iris in Amsterdam.
Conveniently, we both took the same flight to Amsterdam (as she was coming from Lisbon, and that’s where my layover was).
After dropping off our things at the hotel, we headed for a lovely walk around the city. Iris picked a great part of town where we were able to see many of the city’s iconic canals we then found a great little Italian restaurant.
The following day, the plan was to visit the Boijmans art depot in Rotterdam that has been opened to the public for viewing. I don’t know much about art, but Iris explained this is a unique concept.
We had booked a train from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, but unfortunately after about 20 minutes we stopped at a small station. It turns out that there was an obstruction on the tracks, and all of the trains into Rotterdam were suspended.
Therefore, we had to find a bus to take us to Rotterdam. Unfortunately, all we could find at the time was a local bus that made countless stops. However, in due time, we finally made it.
We purchased tickets and learned that they also offer English-language tours every few hours. We decided to check out the depot’s impressive top-floor cafe prior to the tour.
The tour explained the history of the depot and how the items are stored. What was unique about this place versus museums was that we were able to see storage areas and the back side of paintings (including the various tags museums have placed on them over time— it was fascinating to see where some of these paintings have been!). We also got to see the studios where they restore paintings.
Afterwards, we headed to a modern art building across the street where we had a bit of coffee before heading back to Amsterdam. The walk from the train station back to Leidesplein in the late afternoon was crowded, noisy, and unbelievably dirty. Frankly it was hard to breathe. The morning walk to the train station was fine, but it seems to get progressively worse as the day goes on.
That evening we had a nice dinner at Cafe Americana in Amsterdam, and as soon as I knew it, it was time to head to sleep before my morning flight to Stockholm the next day.