Tuesday, December 23: Amsterdam - Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, Pizza, aimless wandering

I got to see 4 of my favourite Van Gogh paintings today! (And I took pictures of three - the other was The Potato Eaters).

 

 

The Van Gogh Museum was really well-designed and displayed over 200 of his paintings. Some of his paintings were even displayed in glass cases so that you could see both sides of the painting (he reused his canvases for a lot of his work). We even bought a cheesy Van Gogh Christmas tree ornament!

After lunch, we went to the Anne Frank House which has been converted into a museum (with most of the original layout of the "annex" intact).  It was a very interesting and humbling experience to walk through the house, imagining what it was like to live there in hiding for over 2 years.  It's hard to put into words, but we are both happy we went.

Anne Frank House at night.

Looking for a place to eat, we went for a walk through the canals, and stopped at a cute little pizzeria.

Garrett pondering how delicious his pizza will be.while I take arty photos of the surrounding area.

There was a little black cat who was hanging around right outside of the door when we got there, and then at some point he managed to sneak inside.

None of the employees seemed to notice him much, so maybe he's a regular there? I'm sure Mercedes would have done what she could have to try to get at our pizza too.

Garrett and I roamed through the Jordaan area after dinner.

Colourful cheese!

Colourful condoms!

The streets are lined with beautiful old shops and Garrett and I both acquired the habit of window shopping.  We've also applied this habit to looking into people's apartments/houseboats and commenting on how cute they are, etc etc. (Aren't they cute?!).

As we were passing by one particular apartment, however, Garrett noticed that the guy was watching a computer programming tutorial on TV and exclaimed "PHP Tutorial, I could help you with that!" Not realizing that the window was wide open.  :P

We finished off the evening by stopping a traditional Amsterdam Coffee Shop for some cake.