weekend in amersfoort
amsterdam for a weekend with shell was never going to be enough. but fun it was.
a bit of adventure to start the weekend off - after meeting up on friday night at amsterdam airport (shell from london, me from zurich), we headed down to the train station so conveniently located right under the arrivals lounge and jumped on a train heading towards amsterdam. unfortunately it only went towards amsterdam for a short while, before continuing on to amersfoort, halfway across the netherlands towards the german border! whoops. luckily we had lots of friendly dutch helpers to explain to the mean ticket man that we were just stupid tourists not evil fare-evaders. but then, when buying our ticket to get back to amsterdam, we met up with 4 other people who'd also just flown in and ended up on the same train! so this is clearly a conspiracy of the dutch rail authority to get stupid tourists to spend more on train tickets while in the country. amersfoot was a nice place to have visited once though.
saturday we were ready to explore, and first hit a fantastic little cafe "bagles and beans" with superyum bagels and perfectly acceptable coffee, with a very groovy view over a cute canal! the van gogh museum was then our first hit, and it was simply fantastic. i'd not realized before he painted all his work in 4 years, and most of the simply awesome stuff in the 2 years before he decided he was producing rubbish and shot himself.
saturday night we gobbled up some little-bit-too-yum spacecake, but still managed to make it to a fantastic indonesian restuarant (curtesy of the old dutch east indies of course) to feast on a HUGE banquet. yum!
sunday was rijksmuseum time, for some rembrandt and other stuff from the 1600s, the dutch 'golden age'. the incredibly life-like portraits, landscapes and still-lifes are all amazing, but seemed to lack something of the humanity of van gogh. maybe i'm just spoilt by photography.
unfortunately there wasn't time for much else on sunday, except for filling up with some dutch pancakes. yum again. but the bagels still won for the weekend.
amsterdam also has lots of canals,
steep steps,
and strange aliens
.
a bit of adventure to start the weekend off - after meeting up on friday night at amsterdam airport (shell from london, me from zurich), we headed down to the train station so conveniently located right under the arrivals lounge and jumped on a train heading towards amsterdam. unfortunately it only went towards amsterdam for a short while, before continuing on to amersfoort, halfway across the netherlands towards the german border! whoops. luckily we had lots of friendly dutch helpers to explain to the mean ticket man that we were just stupid tourists not evil fare-evaders. but then, when buying our ticket to get back to amsterdam, we met up with 4 other people who'd also just flown in and ended up on the same train! so this is clearly a conspiracy of the dutch rail authority to get stupid tourists to spend more on train tickets while in the country. amersfoot was a nice place to have visited once though.
saturday we were ready to explore, and first hit a fantastic little cafe "bagles and beans" with superyum bagels and perfectly acceptable coffee, with a very groovy view over a cute canal! the van gogh museum was then our first hit, and it was simply fantastic. i'd not realized before he painted all his work in 4 years, and most of the simply awesome stuff in the 2 years before he decided he was producing rubbish and shot himself.
saturday night we gobbled up some little-bit-too-yum spacecake, but still managed to make it to a fantastic indonesian restuarant (curtesy of the old dutch east indies of course) to feast on a HUGE banquet. yum!
sunday was rijksmuseum time, for some rembrandt and other stuff from the 1600s, the dutch 'golden age'. the incredibly life-like portraits, landscapes and still-lifes are all amazing, but seemed to lack something of the humanity of van gogh. maybe i'm just spoilt by photography.
unfortunately there wasn't time for much else on sunday, except for filling up with some dutch pancakes. yum again. but the bagels still won for the weekend.
amsterdam also has lots of canals,
steep steps,
and strange aliens
posted by benjamin at 8:52 pm
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