I am Amsterdam, and You Can be Too!

Today after our respective works, Louise and I went to the van Gogh Museum, among other things.  

Pictured is the Rijksmuseum, not the van Gogh Museum.  I AMSTERDAM is a tourist-friendly slogan here in Amsterdam.  I am Amsterdam, and you can be too!

Unlike the National Gallery in Washington, the van Gogh Museum stays open late on Friday nights.  Like almost every other major museum in the entire world.  Except the National Gallery in Washington.  Am I bitter because I showed up at the National Gallery one Friday at 4:45 and the guard refused to let me in, or to believe that it was common for major museums to stay open late on Fridays?  No.  Not at all.

Any way, we wandered around for a bit, looking at van Goghs and listening to the ZAPP String Quartet play.  According to their website, the ZAPP Quartet is "Holland's most sparkling, hardest grooving and improvising string quartet."  The world's hardest grooving and most sparkling are not terms I would usually use to describe a string quartet.

We're planning on making a trip back.  Maybe next time the ZAPP quartet plays - which will be on the Fourth of July.

After the museum closed, we wandered around the Museumplein area, where there was a DJ and lots of tents and people selling food and beer.  We sat in a gold velour-draped tent and ate Thai chicken on sticks.  Life was good.

The trees were amazingly stunted in appearance.  Quite desert like: I enjoyed the strange appearance, though it would have been prettier with normal looking trees.