Van Gogh Museum and etc

The bed at on board the Maria Alberta boat was surprisingly comfortable, and this morning we slept in until around 9:00 when breakfast was called. At the breakfast table, Olivia and I met Wendy & Andre from LA. Wendy is involved in a theatre production (Midsummer Night Dream I think?) in Berlin and Andre is a Special Ed. Teacher visiting his girlfriend. Very nice people and they are so much nicer than some of these American Tourists I’ve met. (Sorry, might sound a bit bias, but I’ve met some rude Americans tourists in the past) Andre was nice enough to offer us a map and helped me locate a few "Coffee Shops" in his Lonely Planet book (Thrills n Chills, hehe). They also shared some travel tips, which was quite useful. It took Olivia and I quite long to get ready and finally we got out by 11:00. First we went to pick up a few items from H&M; for some reason, the Amsterdam store still had some Stella McCartney stocks, so I grabbed a few items off the rack! :D We ate our lunch at a very nice McD’s (i think the interior is designed by some famous designer) and then to the Yellow Bike Company for our Bike Tour. As we waited at the Bike Shop, we were told there weren't enough people to form a tour and they had to cancel it! They tried so hard to convince us not to go by telling us that the weather was gonna be crappy and stuff, so at last we opt out and got our refund.

Our next destination was Van Gogh Museum and we took the tram there. Without doing any research in the first place, I thought the museum only features some of his paintings. Turned out they have almost the complete collection of paintings he did throughout the different stages of his life. I was quite surprise to see some of his oriental theme paintings, never knew he did them (sorry, but they were kinda ugly). The museum also did a good job on explaining the background information with detail description for each painting. Other than paintings, the museum kept some of the things Van Gogh used like his closet and some of his letters. Overall it was very interesting and it’s a must-see for art fans! I don’t think Olivia is a fan of Van Gogh’s artwork and she looked a little bored there. (Sorry!) We spent quite a while at the museum, and before we left we used the video booth there to send a video message to Bo and my Dad. :D

After the Van Gogh Museum we went back to the restaurant district we were in the night before cuz the food we had the other night was very good! Afterwards we wandered around and ended up on the other side of the Red Light District! I feel bad for the women working there, although their work environment is already a lot safer than in other countries. It’s just a weird feeling seeing them on "display". Walked around the Dam Square for a bit and suddenly it started pouring! Since we ran out of things to do, I talked Olivia into try the hemp lollipop with me! :D Hehe! Too bad the amount of hemp in the lollipop was not enough to get us high, but I did had a good sleep afterwards.