Picto Diary - 16 May 2016 - Van Gogh

Above: Bike parking lot. Amsterdam, Holland. 16 May 2016.

Montage and Mwah (sic) flew into Amsterdam from Vienna this AM to stay a couple of nights.

TIMDT and SpaGo flew London where they would join cronies for museum hopping and shopping in London for three days, followed by four or five days of Cotswold walking.

Amsterdam reminds me of Copenhagen where bicycling used as transport proliferated.

Nobody wears helmets here, though.

A couple of times I have found myself experiencing near misses with swiftly moving bicycles. I'm slow to get used to the fact that some of the narrow "walking paths" are actually bicycle right of ways. One woman cursed me out in a near miss while walking back to the hotel from De Mollen last night.

Above: Street musicians. Amsterdam, Holland. 16 May 2016.

An odd, but effective, combination. Violin, accordion and bass trombone.

Professionals moonlighting? They played classical selections beautifully.

Above: Van Gogh. Van Gogh Museum. Amsterdam, Holland. 16 May 2016.

Museum houses the family collection... most of Van Gogh's works.

Reading about the artistic conflict between Gaugin and Van Gogh, I thought about how Glen Frey and Don Henley never got along, despite creating, together, iconic music.

During Dutchman Van Gogh's early years in Holland, he painted peasant scenes. Did he acquire that taste from early Dutch master Vermeer, who also painted numerous peasant works.... as seen in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna a couple of days ago?

Van Gogh's work reminded me of Munch. TIMDT and Mwah (sic) toured the Munch Museum in Oslo four or five years ago. I Googled "Van Gogh/Munch" and found this from the Fine Art Connoisseur website:

For many, the visionary, psychologically fascinating painters Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) form a dream pairing. Their works bear a strong visual correlation, carried by the intensity of each artist's vision. Of van Gogh Munch famously wrote "Fire and ardor were in his brush during the few years that he consumed himself for his art." The connection even makes sense historically -- both artists visited Paris in the latter part of the 19th century and benefited from its vibrant artistic culture -- but no record exists to show they actually met. Until now, it has even been extremely rare that they shared gallery space.

http://www.fineartconnoisseur.com/Van-Gogh-Meets-Munch/21511349

My sense of the similarity of Van Gogh's and Munch's work was not misplaced!

Mom had hung a copy of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" in the 5th East house in Provo during my pre-teen and teen years. I was the son of an educator and a house wife. We couldn't afford a Van Gogh! But, Mom had a sense of what was artistically great and wanted to share that with us kids. Visiting these European museums in later life and finding the contents fascinating derives in no small part from Mom's efforts to acculturate her kids.

Above: The Bishop and Montage and canal. Amsterdam, Holland. 16 May 2016.

Amsterdam was Montage's idea. We needed to do something post Tauck Danube river trip, he said. It was a good idea. TIMDT and Mwah (sic) were in Amsterdam in the late '70's, but I didn't recall much about the visit.

We arrived at hotel in sunny, cool weather, about noon. We walked a lot... ate cheese and baguette at a canal cafe ... toured the Van Gogh Museum... lazed at a busy sidewalk cafe and watched "tout Amsterdam,"... dined on lamb at Restaurant d'Vjiff Vieghen (Five Flys).... furtively, cap brims pulled down, walked through De Mollen... and had a post dinner cocktail at our hotel, Andaz.

"Five Flys" was pricey. Expensive wine list. Food, served in restored 17th century building, was not bad. Both Montage and Mwah (sic) had lamb. I wouldn't go back. Service was iffy as one reasonably capable female server was stretched between too many tables. The restaurant seems to have adapted to a majority tourist clientele that is less likely to demand the service level that would be demanded by local repeat customers.

Andaz Hotel is a 5 star boutique hotel in the Hyatt family.

Room: Not your typical hotel room configuration. Shower is behind what, at first, looks like a closet. Sink is in a dressing table center stand next to the bed. Commode is in a private closet away from the shower. There are plates on the shelves (full of relevant to Holland books) that look like they're about to fall off, but, they are glued on and serve as useful places to deposit change, keys etc. Room is very "device friendly" with multiple, easily accessible sockets near bed and desk. King size bed is firm... comfortable. The room is bright and very functional. My 1st floor room looks out onto a beautiful courtyard garden. Other rooms, on seven stories, are canal facing.

Hotel: Five Star Andaz Amsterdam is located on Prinsengracht Canal. Bar, and restaurant, and check in areas are very contemporary in design. Black walls, eclectic sculpture, chandeliers asymmetrically placed, lots of indirect lighting around the mirrored, black, marble bar and black walled lobby after dark. It is nice here. Kind of arty.

Check in, though, was inept and tedious. Unbelievably, a hotel manager commandeered the computer being used by our check-in clerk to handle something she wanted to do for someone else. When questioned about the interruption, the manager did not apologize. Rather, she said our clerk had access to another computer. She (the manager) should be fired. She was not at all oriented towards good customer service. Check-in process took over 30 minutes.

Above: Bishop. De Mollen. Amsterdam, 16 May 2016.

Perplexed by proliferation of red light illuminated vitrines, the Bishop returns to the hotel without solving the mystery.

Addendum:


Steve:

If you're still in Nuremburg, go to the Brathaus in the old city. Outstanding.

Bling,
Albuquerque, NM


zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Jack Aroon,
Mahwah, NJ