Hello all. It is Tuesday and we are in St. Emilion in southern France. We need to catch you up on our trip.
Friday was our last day in Amsterdam. We must have been exhausted – we slept until 10:30 in the morning. We hurried to the train for Amsterdam Centraal and Tram #2 for the museums. The Rijksmuseum was hung with banners announcing the visit of the Vermeer Woman with a Balance from Washington DC that I had seen last summer. The Rijksmuseum normally has four Vermeers. The Love Letter is on loan, so we would still get to see four Vermeers.
We grabbed a light lunch across from the museum so we could spend the afternoon inside. The Rijksmuseum has been under renovation since 2005 and will open fully in 2012/13. The Phillips wing is open and houses the Dutch masters from the Golden Age (1600s). The Rembrandts are extraordinary. I had not seen my favorite, Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem in 40 years. I managed to capture a picture of this small painting before the guard told me that cameras were not allowed (Our Rick Steves’ guide book had indicated that non-flash photography was permitted, but not true). Of course Night Watch is the largest and most famous Rembrandt to see. There were many other extremely beautiful ones.The four Vermeers were stunning: The Little Street is a unique street scene with incredible detail. We almost didn’t see it since it was separate from the others; the Women with a Balance is graceful and beautiful; Woman in Blue with a Letter is classic Vermeer: the window, the woman, and the map on the back wall; the Milkmaid brought tears – the colors are vivid and beautiful.
The Van Gogh museum is showing a special evening and night themed collection of Van Gogh paintings and his inspirations from all over the world. Starry Starry Night is the highlight and was so much more beautiful in this setting than in the MoMA in March. So interesting to see how Millet, Rembrandt and Delacroix all influenced Van Gogh's work. You are so aware of the tragedy of his suicide after struggling with epilepsy became impossible for him.
We finished the exhibition, exhausted and starving, looked outside the museum and it was pouring. We knew there was the whole permanent exhibition to go, so had a GREAT dinner in the museum coffee shop. There was a cool camera setup where you could appear to stand in the middle of a Van Gogh painting projected up on a wall. Janet and I played with that and finished the museum in time for the rain to stop, a Friday night band to start playing and throngs of young people to pack the entrance.
We rode the train back to Schiphol and made a final look at the shops. The trains were clean and comfortable. Some looked brand new.This was the end of our transition phase. Tomorrow we are set to leave on an early train to Paris and Bayeux to begin our two-week dream vacation in France. We would be staying with our friends John and Gigi Bromage, owners of FranceCustomTours.com for two nights in one of their gites before heading out for a trip to Brittany, the Dordogne, Albi, Carcassonne, Toulouse, St. Emilion and Bordeaux with John.
We kept passing a great flower stand at the airport – and even though we were lugging hundreds of pounds of luggage (see first post), it seemed wrong to come for a visit from Amsterdam and not bring flowers. We bought a beautiful yellow lily bouquet for Gigi and figured that we would find a way to get it to Bayeux (begging a water carafe from the CitizenM front desk for the night for starters). We stayed up packing (Did I mention there was absolutely no room in this chic Hotel room?) and set early alarms, crashing to bed for a restless short night – eager to begin.
Stay tuned for more,
Love from Janet and Rozanne
No comments:
Post a Comment