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After a good night's sleep, we awoke the
next morning to a rainy day and had a minimal breakfast in front of thes beautiful
doors--the best part of our flat after the bathtub! Then we headed back out into the city.
Because it was rainy, we visited the Rijkmuseum, where we saw all sorts of religious, historical, and mythological paintings dating as far back as 1100. It was mentally exhausting, but well worth it. Then we went back to the red-light district, to de Bergstraat, (pictured below) which was a small and tasteful side street (also mentioned in the John Irving book), and an obvious contrast to de Wallen. |
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| Somewhere near De Bergstraat, we passed these beautiful
bulldogs and I couldn't resist an artsy-fartsy photo of them...This photo also shows the
incredible number of bikes in Holland...I think people bike more than they drive, and it
is much harder to deal with as a pedestrian, let me tell you!
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Toward the end of the day, we visited another cool local pub... |
We returned to the red-light district later that evening and, contrary to our expectations, found it to be less intimidating at night, when the tourists abound. It rained again, and we took shelter under an awning, where a nice man convinced us to go to a strip show. It was rather tasteful, I must say, set up like a theatre, and it was not as embarrassing as I thought it would be (I believe there were at least two other women there as well). I'm sure it was one of the more touristy shows, but it was indeed interesting to see! |
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Our last day, we went to the Van Gogh Museum! Excellent! It was packed with people, especially since it was raining again. But it was quite an e xperience to see all those famous Van Gogh paintings for real and up close. We didn't see the most famous "Starry Night"--it was impossible to push into the crowd of tourists around this most famous painting. Then we spent the last of our deutchmarks at yet another pub, as we awaited the time when we had to train it back to the airport. At 7:30 we were back on the plane to Singapore, and then, after a 2-3 hour layover in the impressive international section of the Singapore airport, we were on our final leg to Melbourne. |
| Click the frog to move on to our Christmas 1999-2000 vacation with Mom B and Chris (Great Ocean Road and Tasmania). |
