Chapter 3: Amazing Amsterdam - Our Way!

 Dear Koko, 

In the last chapter I told you about how we arrived at Amsterdam, so now let's focus on what we did there. 

There were a number of things-to-do in Amsterdam (sans the hash browns of course), of which the first thing on our list was the Rijk Museum. As with all our bookings, we always do them in advance, preferably through the museum website. This time was no exception and we got the tickets. I was very excited to see The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Vermeer. It was only when we reached the museum that we found out that the painting has been shifted to another museum in Netherlands, but we did not have enough time to put that in our itinerary now. I was a little bummed for sure, but the museum is so beautiful and so many other wonderful things to offer that I soon forgot this slight heartburn. 

Located on Museumstraat (as the name suggests, all major museums are on this street), it was an easy bus ride from our hotel. Boy, was it windy and chilly, we were so happy to be inside a warm and large building! In our excitement and eagerness to avoid queues, we were probably the first few people to enter the place. I am not sure if that was the reason, but given my other European museum experience had been Louvre, I found this experience much more cozy. The staff were friendlier, happy to share stories and history, it was not over-crowded with the exception of a few large guided groups from schools every now and then. We were actually able to stand or even sit in front of beautiful works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and others and admire them. 

Like this one, where apparently, these gentlemen hold your eyes whichever angle you see it from and hence I am checking this. Apart from flash photography, other photographs were allowed. You were able to locate a room of portraits which had a considerable presence of pets, which also made you nostalgic about Snowy. 

After some walking around, we stopped by the amazing gift shop where we picked up a Ravensburger puzzle of a Vermeer painting and some other small knickknacks before we broke for lunch at this beautiful restaurant called called Hansel and Gretel. A cute little pub (every eatery is a pub here) with themed decorations, the witch's wares all up for display and the most friendly staff ever! We gobbled up some super steaks before we could head over to the place where you really wanted to go that day: The Nemo Science museum, as you are showing off here, yes it looks like a ship!

It was so much fun, for us heading back to school and for you to be be playing a scientist in a lab, a discoverer of truth, viewing science in action. the chain reaction demonstration was the icing on the cake (which happens every day at 2 PM local time)

We were done by the evening and we decided to walk to Anne Frank's house. It was an unassuming house by the canal, has become quite a busy museum now. It was quite crowded and my indecision on whether or not I want to look into the cloistered quarters of a teenage girl's hiding years finally had me here, at her doorstep. I finally decided it would be wrong to take you through this unprepared, so we skipped the tour. While I am obsessed with the Holocaust, and maybe someday, but that day was not it. So we stopped by a few more games shops and that was it. The next day was the day I was most looking forward to (there are many such days on this trip). But that's the next chapter, right?

Love, 

Ma