The Full Van Gogh Experience, complete with depressed weather.

Day two in Amsterdam, 24th of June (Happy birthday Mum!)

Today it rained. A lot.

Based on the forecast we had decided that today would be museum day and when we woke up to find it pissing down we were glad we had planned it that way! After breakfast we headed to the Musuem square – we were going to check out the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum (even though the Rijksmuseum only had one wing open as it was under renovation).

We got to the Van Gogh museum. Well, turns out everyone else had the same idea. So we had the joy of queuing in the torrential rain for over half an hour.

The museum itself was also really expensive (and I am writing this after we had been to the national museum in Cardiff which was free and arguably as good/better...). Inside was steaming as all the wet punters took of jackets and umbrellas.

The collection is undeniably comprehensive and rather fantastic. I had already prepared myself for the fact that none of his starry night pictures were there. However they had a very good Sunflowers one as well as other ones which the audioguide taught us were famous and were rather good. They also had a painting done by his friend (although soon to be his ex-friend) of Van Gogh actually painting one of the sunflowers paintings. The travel through the museum was slow due to the crowds – at the more popular paintings you had to wait until you could get a spot where you could actually see the painting!

Hearing about his life and how that influenced his art was really good, although Greg who was coming from absolutely no background knowledge of Van Gogh didn't find the audioguide informative enough. He was particularly confounded by how someone who was not considered very good or important during his own life could come to be so famous – the guide didn't really mention about how or why he became considered one of the great impressionists during the 20^th century...

Once we had seen everything, we were half starved and it was still raining, so we decided to eat at the museum cafe. Apart from being crazy busy, it was actually pretty good, it had basically everything you could possibly want for lunch available. The system was "cruise around with your tray grabbing things then queue up and pay at the end" system. We decided we wanted something hot but we had to wait for a fresh dish to be ready. Trying to be clever and beat the crowds Greg sent me to line up with my coffee to pay, so that when the hot food was ready he could just slot into the line beside me and we'd be away. But the pay queue moved so fast and the hot food came so slowly that I had to bail at the last minute and go back to the end of the line no fewer than 3 times.

After lunch we contemplated the weather and our museum-weary feet. It was already nearing mid-afternoon and we knew that to go to the Rijksmuseum would mean yet another queue due to the weather, and we also knew that it was only partly open due to the renovations. We were also just so weary of being tourists at this point! (Also I had spent way too much money in the Van Gogh shop and didn't fancy another steep museum entry fee!). So it was an easy decision to flag the second museum and just head back to base, rest up, and then have a nice dinner later on.

We caught the tram back to base and kicked up our heels for a while.

Our seach for a dinner place later on found us in an extremely well established Italian restaurant where the price was right and food was hearty and good. A large (in all the ways) family of Italians were happily eating there so that's generally a good sign anyway right? Incidentally there was an Italian soccer match on that night and the whole restaurant was holding it's breath waiting for kick off. But we were all finished eating and paid before it started (but we still hurried home so Greg could catch it on the B+B's TV). Greg has really enjoyed been in Europe for this European soccer match – it's as big as the rugby world cup was to us!