Amsterdam, Netherlands

We've just returned from 5 days in the Netherlands!  What an interesting place!  I would love to tell you about it.

We were fortunate enough to stay in a Dutch apartment that was close to the museums we wanted to visit.  It was interesting to experience what a Dutch apartment is like.  Here are a few pictures for you.  Please note the incredibly steep and narrow stairs leading up to the apartment.

This is the apartment building where we stayed.
Emily and Ivan are standing at the entrance.  Our apartment was on the very top floor...where you see the 3 narrow windows directly above them.

The steep narrow steps we trapsed every day.

A nice place to relax at the end of the day.

Looking at the two main rooms.

A place to eat our meals...

and a place to cook our meals.

While Jay was at work, Emily, Ivan and I went to the Rijks Museum.  It is a massive historical building.   At this wonderful museum children are free and children are 17 and younger.  I asked why the age for children was all the way to 17.  The answer was that the curator of the museum had a goal to make sure all Dutch children had the possibility to come and see their heritage that was displayed there.  I really thought that was awesome :o)

I hope you will enjoy some of our favorite things...which...another thing I love, love, loved about the museum...you can take pictures!!! (without flash, of course).

The first painting...so beautiful!

Ivan taking pictures of Van Gogh.

Jolynn's favorite painting.

We learned the Dutch has much history with Indonesia.

Emily at the battle of Waterloo.

The swan.

Goblet of fire.

This is another "Jolynn favorite," but there were so many people surrounding it that I couldn't get too close.  Emily forged ahead and helped me get a good shot...even with her in it :o)

This picture just wouldn't be the same without all the people looking at it.  Who is looking at who?

This is a small fraction of men who had casts taken of their face.  I thought it was very interesting.

This is an amazing library.  It holds 70,000 books all on the subject of art.  You may look at a book, but you cannot check it out (much like at the Library of Congress).  This room was designed to be a library.  The architect who designed the entire museum wanted it to have a library.  In the beginning there were 3,500 books.  

You can see this Indonesian statue sitting on the 3rd level of the museum.  He is holding a diesel engine in his lap.

Emily liked this painting.

These interesting items are made from the traditional blue and white Dutch Delft pottery.

This is every little girl's dream come true.  It is an actual royal doll house that some lucky little princess used to play with!

Close up of the royal doll house.

Ivan loved the brightly painted birds.