Lexi's Birthday in Holland - Day 2 - Older than The Pantry

We woke up late and went to Helder, a very modern dutch sandwich house. Their sandwiches were really good. Mine had aged smoked roast beef and herb cream cheese spread. Lexi had a club sandwich with an egg and bacon in it. Everything was on fresh baked country bread. They weren't very big sandwiches, but they were delicious.

After that, we went to the Rijksmuseum. Only a small section of it was open because it was undergoing renovations, but the collection available still took us two hours to see it all. The pieces were arrayed in sections that represented different eras in Dutch history.

One of the many Dutch chapels who shares design features with the Rijksmuseum

A popular form of painting in Dutch history was the merchant group photo. Rich merchant guilds would pay famous artists to paint them in a pose where they seemed to have been temporarily disturbed from busily doing their job. They then hung them in their offices as to say, see, I'm so busy doing good work for you that I couldn't even stop to pose for a portrait.

I had not seen Rembrandts religious paintings before. He chooses parts of biblical stories that most other artists skip over. These moments encapsulate the intricacy of emotion in the entire story behind them in ways that other artists don't. His portrait of Jeremiah mourning the destruction of Jerusalem where we find Jeremiah in a cave with Jerusalem burning in the back ground, set aflame by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The bible story tells mostly of Jeremiahs warnings to the leaders of Jerusalem and less about how he must have felt after he failed to prevent the burning of his city despite his foreknowledge of the threat.


There was also a great painting of these young Dutch couple right after their wedding which was a quite controversial composition back when it was painted and even compared to wedding photos now. The couple in the photo are dressed in less official and more contemporary clothing seen in other paintings in the romantic garden genre. The couple are flung about each other under a tree, seeming to have slipped away from the wedding party for some time alone. They look flushed as if from exercise or drinking. Few couples in this time had their pictures taken together. Even most wedding pictures we see now are bride and groom posed in dress and tux in front of a bunch of flowers or a fountain. After I thought about it for a while, most of the pictures from our wedding are posed more conservatively than this portrait. Its refreshing that more Dutch artwork seems focussed on trade or some form of sensualist romp (be it feast or frolic) than on war. Oh they do have some war paintings too, but they are outnumbered by stodgy merchants, still lifes of tables full of fine food, people getting drunk in gardens, and at least one blushing couple by 3 to 1 atleast.

I also never noticed that the decline of the dutch trade empire coincided with the rise of steam power as steam ships were heavier and couldn't fit in the dutch harbors that sail ships could use without trouble.

After a walking tour of the city through the floating flower gardens, past the university and through the bar district north of vondelpark, we went back to our hotel and changed for dinner. Dinner was at Silveren Spiegel, which Lexi's friend Nelson suggested to us. Not only was it a great restaurant, but it was also over 350 years old, makes the Pantry seem like an upstart chain in comparison. The restaurant even hid Jews from the Nazi's during the occupation. It was totally old school posh dining experience. There were only tiny christmas light sized bulbs on the chandeliers and we couldn't read the menu until they brought in another candlestick. There was a member of low level British royalty sitting to the right of us, talking about her nephew's title to a younger woman who seemed to be her caretaker. We had bacon wrapped scallops and suckling pig salad for starters. The waiter suggested a very reasonably priced French red to go with our rib eye, which was not only the largest steak we've had in Europe, but the most perfectly cooked. The center fell apart like steak tartar. I tried a 20 year old dutch spirit with desert Oude de Genever, which tasted a lot like a very mellow whiskey. Desert was a tiny molten chocolate cake with cherries in a brandy sauce. It was very pricey, but also very worth it. The service was excellent. They even decanted our wine for us.

There was no way to do this picture without flash. It was that dark inside.

After dinner we went to see Boom Chicago, an American Improv Group permanently stationed in Amsterdam. The show was great. They did this song which was all about how being an American meant that you loved peace and freedom but then switched gears and started throwing in things like guns and oil. They did some other typical improv stuff, working off of audience participation that was as good if not better than some of the later "Whose Line is it Anyway" skits. They also did this bit about dutch product names. There are products in Holland named things like:

Sissy Boy (Clothing)
Notities (notes)
Retard Capsules (cold medicine)
Rabobank (finance)

It was a great show. I think I laughed hardest when audience suggestions ended up with Ghandi as a pimp.

After the show, we had a beer at one of the local pubs and watched all the fratb0yesque English Tourists go by. There are a lot of 20-something English men and women listing about in great loud groups on weekends in Amsterdam. I didn't see any real trouble, but the English do stick out. That is also true in Switzerland, though I must also add that the Americans in Switzerland stick out worse than the English do there.

By this time it was well after 2am so we went home to catch some sleep before Cirque du Soleil the next day.