4th of September

Last day in Amsterdam...there are a few last museums on the list- the Rembrandt House and the Dutch Resistance Museum- and I want to finish the drawing I started the first day we were here, but other than that, nothing planned.  Scott and I split up in the morning, him to go check the trains to Belgium the next day and wander about, me to go find my sketching spot and paint it, planning to meet up at noon at the Rembrandt House.  It proved to not be difficult as far as finding it, as I remembered what the clocktower next to it looked like, and I knew what direction it was in.  Once there and settled in, painting went well, the occasional brisk wind not being too distracting as I had cautiously bundled up after the previous day's error. The shifting sun and clouds proved to make painting shadows a bit trying, but other than that the weather wasn´t too against me.  Though, there was a painting crew across the canal blocking the road, and so every 20 minutes someone would drive halfway down the road and honk at the truck to move so they could get by.  They never did, and eventually the car would have to back out down the road.  Another interesting thing was that a distribution outlet for the Amsterdam post was apparently in the building right behind me, so they started arriving on their bikes to pick up a new shipment about halfway through.   After about a half an hour, one of the postal workers had noticed what I was doing as he was loading up his bike nearby and came up to have a chat.  He mentioned that there's apparently a painting conservation college here. (maybe? his english was good, but it might not have been that good)  At any rate we chatted amiably about the difficulty of painting details and how maybe I should make studies of parts and then paint the whole picture back home in a studio, and I tried explaining that painting out in the city was the whole point, but he didnt seem entirely convinced this was the best way to go about things.  Regardless, he went back to work and I finished up- I had looked at the map previously and realized that I only needed about ten minutes, tops, to get to the Rembrandt House from where I was, so I pushed it to the very last minute.  Turns out I only needed about 5 minutes, but whatever, I was on time and that was what mattered.  Scott was there in a minute and we both went in.

As expected, the Rembrandt House turned out to be the closest thing to a religious pilgrimage that I could possibly make.  This was so true I even wrote it in the guestbook.  They had all the pulverized pigment makings in his studio and everything, and we got to see his wunderkammer (though that's a German word, presumably he called it something in Dutch), which is essentially the Baroque era concept of a nifty collection of rarities and unique things, ranging from antlers to shells to skulls to weapons and armor.  It was impressive how they pulled together all the period furniture and utensils into this one house, and convenient for them how when Rembrandt went bankrupt, they drew up a complete list of everything he owned!  They had a etching demonstration there, a nice break from the overemphasis on Rembrandt the brilliant painter instead of Rembrandt the brilliant printmaker.  Few people know he actually revolutionized printmaking as much as anything else he did.  I, for one, did not know that he had a printmaking studio full of equipment in his own home.

Once out of the Rembrandthouse, we stopped for a quick lunch and then made our way over to the last place on our list- the Dutch Resistance Museum.  It was quite informative, and presented its material in some really novel ways, eschewing the general musem plan of 'things on walls with plaques'.  They had quoted interviews, sound bites, lots of ephermera, video reels- actually home movies, most of them, just for period ambiance and a sense of what life was like.  They even had a table where you could try to determine which were the fake identification and ration cards versus the real ones, magnifying glass provided!  The floorplan of the museum was also unique in how it followed not one straight path but had many nooks and crannies and side paths and such- it was explained that the "main" path was the life of the majority of the Dutch people, whereas the smaller offshoots were devoted to the individual resistance groups and places and people.  It was really quite fascinating.  Turns out (inevitably, with these things) that the only factoid I thought I knew about the Dutch Resistance, aside from that there was one, was that when the Nazis tried to force Holland's Jews to wear the Star of David, the whole country rallied and did so as well, making segregation and selection impossible.  This turns out to have been a fabrication, but for the most part only of history, not mentality.

After finishing our museum list, we returned back to our home sweet hostel and tried to figure out somewhere to eat dinner.  Scott's parents had told us to treat ourselves to a nice quality meal, so he found a neat vegetarian restaurant not so very far from us with excellent ratings.  His justification for vegetarian food is that it's very easy to screw up vegetables, so they must be doing something right.  And indeed, they were doing something very well.  The restaurant was a nice little cosy neighborhood place, though still on the upscale side.  They coped with our English excellently, and we decided to really go all out and get the full meals, not just an entree.  I ordered the Indian selection and Scott got their other option, the non-ethnicitied one, I suppose.  It was delicious, and incredibly reasonable for the price we were paying, which is always a nice feeling.  It was a really comfortable respite from street vendors and grocery stores, and an excellent end to our stay in Amsterdam.