In front of the famous "I AMsterdam" sign
Of course, we stopped at quite a few museums including the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijks Museum, the Rembrandt House, and the Anne Frank House. Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters, so I thoroughly enjoyed seeing many of his works including "The Potato Eaters" and "Crows in a wheat field." Van Gogh sure did love a good wheat field every now and again. The museum was four floors taking viewers on a journey of the progression of Van Gogh's art. The Rijks Museum carries a wide variety of paintings including many famous ones like "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt, "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer, and a YSL dress inspired by a Mondrian. The Rembrandt House is a model of the home the artist lived in, each room a vignette of his life. The last museum of the trip was the Anne Frank, the highlight of the trip for me. It was an incredibly moving experience to see a place I read and learned about in school in reality. Stepping into this piece of history overwhelmed me when I though about the suffering of the Frank family and that this was the last place they were all together before being sent to the camps. Nothing can describe what going to the Anne Frank house meant to me, only that it was the highlight of my trip for sure.
With Van Gogh
Selfie with "The Night Watch"
YSL
Amsterdam is a gorgeous city built around canals. Even in the rain, Amsterdam is stunning and I feel in love after an hour of being there. Of course, there are hoards of people riding bikes or pedestrians attempting to shield themselves from the rain. To avoid the rain, I kept stopping into cafes to warm up. My favorite was called De Laaste Kruimel or The Last Crumb. It was incredibly cozy inside and it resembled and Anthropologie catalog mixed with a typical French cafe. I actually ate there on Saturday and Sunday to get goat cheese quiche or a goat cheese sandwich (goat cheese was recurring this weekend as I also ate it on a salad one night).
Inside De Laaste Kruimel
A good chunk of my trip revolved around one thing:clogs. When I think of Amsterdam, I think of wheels of orange cheese and bright, yellow wooden clogs. Granted, no one in the Netherlands actually wears these clogs, but I wanted to see them nonetheless. Before coming to Leuven, my parents gave me a charm bracelet to fill, so in Amsterdam I was on the hunt for a silver clog charm which I found without any difficulty. Searching for charms has been a fun activity for me when I travel, so I enjoyed the hunt in a souvenir shop in Amsterdam. On top of buying a clog, I sat in a gigantic clog for the perfect photo op!
My gigantic yellow Clog
Even in the rain, the canals, complete with fall foliage and bikes, are stunning!
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