Amsterdam, Netherlands (Day Two): Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, & the Anne Frank House (+ Our First Michelin-Starred Restaurant)
If you missed my post about day one of our trip, go read about it here.
Rijksmuseum
Our first stop on day two, which was our museum-heavy day, was the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands and is dedicated to Dutch arts and history. It’s the largest art museum in the country, making it a must-visit if you’re coming to Amsterdam. Look out for work by the Dutch masters Jacob van Ruisdael, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, and Rembrandt. I was also intrigued by one of the paintings I noticed in their collection, pictured below, which is the only known portrait of a Black man in early European painting.
We actually began our time in the Rijksmuseum by getting breakfast at the café inside. We split the larger breakfast option, of which the stand out parts were the egg en cocotte, which is where you slow-bake an egg in a water bath, and the perfectly tangy mandarin oranges. We then perused the museum for several hours. I made a resolution on this trip that I would stop taking pictures of the famous paintings in museums (because you can find these online and I never look back at them anyway), and instead, I would just take detail shots of things that interested me or I found funny. So enjoy the Rijksmuseum through the lens of begging dogs, dancing skeletons, and people who are weirded out by bread.
Van Gogh Museum
Our second museum stop of the day was the Van Gogh Museum. This was another must-see for us, as my all-time favorite artist is Van Gogh, and this museum houses some of his most famous works, including The Potato Eaters, Almond Blossom, The Bedroom, and several of his self portraits. These paintings were interspersed with biographical information about his life and artistic development, letters, and interpretations of his worldview. I was particularly intrigued by their reading of his fascination with peasants and fields as a result of their being “close to nature,” as the museum writes. “Their life was linked to the cycle of sowing and harvesting, of life and death.” This is actually somewhat related to the topic of my dissertation research!
I managed to stick with my resolution not to take an overabundance of photos here, so these are just ones of paintings with which I wasn’t previously familiar.
Anne Frank House
Our final museum of the day was the Anne Frank House, which is both a museum and an audio-guided tour of the Secret Annex, the top floors of Otto Frank’s business where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis for over two years during WWII. The Secret Annex has been preserved as it was found by Otto, the only surviving member of the Frank family, when he returned from Auschwitz. While the annex was largely emptied of personal possessions, fragments remain: photographs pasted to the walls, a map of the Allied Forces’ progress towards occupied Amsterdam on a map, and, of course, Anne Frank’s diary. Accompanying the walk through the annex were recordings made from letters, Anne’s diary, and newspaper articles, tracking the historical context of this moment and bringing to life the daily routines of those who lived there as they unknowingly headed towards eventual discovery and death in Nazi concentration camps. Needless to say, this was an incredibly moving experience.
Note: there is no photography allowed in the Anne Frank House.
Dinner: Ciel Bleu
Since you only turn thirty once, and Ryan really loves food, I figured one of my best surprises of the trip would be to take him to a fancy restaurant. This is something we never do. I’m the type of person who likes a $2 cone of fries (as evinced by my meals once we got to Brussels) just as much as a sit-down three-course dinner, and I can never seem to justify spending so much money on such a fleeting experience. But this trip was about celebrating Ryan, so I booked us a table at Ciel Bleu, a two-Michelin-star restaurant at the top of Hotel Okura.
My biggest takeaway from the whole experience was just feeling profoundly uncomfortable. I did not belong in this place with my entirely thrifted outfit. They brought out a stool just to put my beat-up little travel-safe purse on, like some kind of purse-throne. They wouldn’t allow you to get up or sit down without helping with your chair, and by no means should you expect to walk to the restroom alone—you must be escorted. Every time we spilled crumbs on the table, they’d be there to clean them off. When Ryan rearranged his silverware, plate, and cup wrong, they made sure to put everything in its proper place while he was in the bathroom. From the moment we walked in, I felt like an impostor. The guy next to us was casually talking about buying a company and laying off all the lazy employees, for God’s sake.
The food itself was very good, but in a weird way. In an experience kind of way. Like we’d been transported into the Keanu Reeves dinner scene in Always Be My Maybe. Each course was themed around a spice from around the world. There was a weird cold salty gel salad thing at one point, but the rest was excellent, though that could be in part due to how hungry we were by the time each dish arrived—I learned it takes a long time (like 3-4 hours) to eat a meal at a restaurant like this.
Thanks for reading!
Up Next: A Half-Day at The Hague