Amsterdam: Sunday, July 19th

Arrive in Amsterdam – 7:40 AM



For our 7 hour layover, Fay and I took a quick look at the city of Amsterdam. Followed a walking tour suggested by my dad from National Geographic.

The city was definitely not awake yet when we first got there around 8:30, maybe a combination of it being Sunday and early in the morning? The city and its canals were absolutely beautiful, but kind of eerie with only a few cars and a few bikes passing in the streets and nothing open. I really enjoyed the arched bridges over the many canals, the willow trees shading the cobblestone paths alongside the canals, and the old bikes chained up all along the roads. It kind of reminded me of a very large college campus with old grand buildings.

Photography by Fay Lee

I especially liked the bikes, they were all pretty old and beat up looking, rusty with seats tearing off. Some were spray painted fluorescent colors with plastic flours wrapped around the bike baskets. One even had a ripped apart teddy bear dangling from its handle bars… that was kind of creepy. These bikes, where everyone sits straight up on them, reminds me of the bikes in China, where people purposely made their bikes look old and deteriorated to avoid it being stolen.

In general, the early morning city of Amsterdam was very calming… everything appeared simple and sweet.
Photography by Fay Lee

We passed by the Anne Frank house, but the line wrapped around the entire block, so we did not go in. Eventually we made our way to the Van Gogh Museum and spent the afternoon in there.

It’s interesting to see some of Van Gogh’s earlier works of art that’s generally not exhibited. He pretty much decided over night to be an artist, and started painting. His early works were very dark, nothing like the vibrant colorful works most know him for. It took him a good long time before he found “his style,” and this was after studying other artistic styles in various places. Paris seemed to have the greatest effect on his style, his colors gradually lightened, and his strokes of course were greatly influenced by the impressionists. His subject turned from portraying lives of peasants to landscape and flowers. There was also a time where he was very interested in Japanese art, and began to imitate that style. Anyhow, I’ve never studied much of Van Gogh and this museum was very interesting to me, to see his art change from wall to wall each time he discovered a new inspiration or style. Throughout his life, his brother and his brother’s wife supported Van Gogh through many hard times, and Van Gogh himself suffered from mental illnesses that hindered his work. At the end, it was his sister in law that collected his work throughout his life and after his death.

There was also an Avant-Garde 20’s and 60’s exhibition at the museum.

Most of the 20’s art showed artists trying to capture utopia, some were politically charged, and many appeared to be mocking society/government. I enjoyed these. 60’s avant-garde art went over my head. I guess the theme by the 60’s was “absence of meaning,” capturing simple things, playing with space (many were 3-D) and one point that was made very clear by some of the pieces is that art does NOT have to be aesthetically pleasing in any sense. One piece in particular made my sister and I kind of sick… it was labeled “Fat in the corner of a box” or something like that. It was an greasy old gross looking plastic box hung up on the wall with the flaps open twards you… and something that I guess was suppose to look like “fat” or really gross lard in one corner… Many of the other pieces also bewildered me.

After the museum, we grabbed a quick bite to eat (hotdog stand) and took a tram back to the airport for our flight to Berlin.