Day 306: Sunny Day

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It was sunny today, finally, all day. Do you know that in California it is sunny 300 days out of the year on average? And now I take the time to comment and write about the weather more than I wish I did. It makes me feel like I’m getting old, talking about the weather, aches and pains, and talking over my husband and finishing each other’s stories. Do you do that too?

The sunshine and light make me incredibly happy and I was torn going into the Rijksmuseum with Julie when it was so gorgeous out. It felt like a shame to be indoors when we should be outside. But we enjoyed the moment, nevertheless, with the crowds! My favorite discovery today was the library in the museum. I always wanted to be a librarian and could spend hours in a library or bookstore. I loved the spiral staircases, walls of books, the old smells of paper and leather, and two patrons or workers with their laptops. I loved the old and the new.

Afterwards, we walked from the Rijksmuseum to Albert Cuyp market and enjoyed strolling the street in the sunshine. It finally felt good again and I got my dose of Vitamin D.

We took the 14 tram to Westermarkt
where I left Julie to visit the Anne Frank house and to finish exploring the city, while I went back home for a doctor’s appointment. Good news! I’m going to live – results were negative and I felt relief!!

Life is good.

Happy Memorial Day! We are missing being in the states and BBQing and swimming today. Hope you all raise the flag and raise a glass to this wonderful freedom we all get to enjoy.

Namaste.

24Apr2013

Day 273: Living it Up at the Rijksmuseum and in the Sunshine

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I have a motto – Live It Up! We only get one life and we have limited time, so we better live up every minute and choose to do what creates happiness for ourselves, our friends, our family and our community. Right now. Every damn day!

Some of my daily sayings include:

Let it go.

Do you want to create a connection or conflict?

It’s all good.

Yes.

Life is good.

What made you happy today?

No worries.

So what?

I love you.

Can I have a do-over?

God bless you.

I’m sorry.

I made a mistake. Can I try again?

Do the right thing. Choose the harder right.

In 20 years, this won’t matter.

But I digress… One of the best things I’ve learned so far is to live in the moment and to enjoy what you have and where you are. Right now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Be in the moment and live it up. And I do. And I do my work and take care of my responsibilities and I have fun, every day in some way. If the mama’s happy, everyone is happy. Am I right??

Today I rode my bike for the first time from Amstelveen into Amsterdam with my friends, and i was so proud of myself. I’ve been a little intimidated and finally faced my stupid fears and went, like all the other Dutch people! We met up with Cami at the Rijksmuseum and hired a tour guide for five euros each to give us the highlights of the museum. I highly recommend this option for your first visit. We also all had museum cards, which get you into the museum for free and avoids the queues. The museum just reopened after ten years of renovations. There were lots of problems and bureaucracy that postponed the reopening, but finally last week it reopened again and it is marvelous. The architecture is amazing, and was almost as entertaining as the art.

The arrangement of the collections are now organized by combining paintings, sculpture, crafts, and historical objects chronologically. Together, they tell the story of Dutch art and history Ina more contextual iced and meaningful way.

This was the first piece that was highlighted. It is from the Middle Ages and depicts the Virgin Mary expressing sorrow. The majority of the art produced in Europe during the Middle Ages was of a religious nature.

This painting is from the 19th century and was created by George Hendrik Breitner. Its interest comes from the use of photography to structure the painting. The veiled woman in the front is significantly larger than the other figures and was originally a maid, but was transformed into a well to do lady as requested by the art dealer. In this time,maids and the wealthy folks were not seen on the street at the same time of day. So this was cutting edge!

Van Gogh’s self portrait and a few of his pieces were displayed. Most of his art is in his own museum, and is temporarily at the Hermitage while the VG museum is being renovated.

We climbed up several flights of stairs to see a 20th century airplane that was designed by the Dutch.

We were all fascinated by how they got the airplane onto and into the building on the highest floor. They took it apart and rebuilt it over several months to get it to fit indoors.

The best part of sightseeing with a tour guide, is that they highlight details that you might otherwise overlook. I’ve seen Vermeer’s The Milkmaid before, but this time I noticed the broken window and the light coming through the cracks, and the Delft tiles on the floor. I loved the woman’s hands and the stillness and simplicity of her pouring milk.

This scene by Jan Steen is awesome and provided my lesson for the day. This painting is called the Merry Family. I love that everyone is being silly and jovial and playing together. The paper hanging from the mantel tells the moral of the story: “as the old sing, so shall the young twitter.” The young will copy and mimic their elders. What will become of our youth if we set the wrong example?

The masterpiece of the Rijksmuseum is Rembrandt’s Nightwatch painting. The room where it is hung is where it was originally showcased. The entire room is dedicated to Rembrandt, the master of capturing light and darkness. You could sit in this room and stare for hours and see something different every time.

Speaking of light, the sun was shining so warmly today and brightly that we had to go outside for lunch and soak up the sun. I’ll leave you with a few more pictures from this glorious day. Namaste and I hope you get a chance to see the newly reopened Rijksmuseum.

And after the beauty of the Rijksmuseum, nature finished the day with her beautiful, final curtain.

Life is good.

16Feb2013

Day 205: The Night Lights

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Finally the weather warmed up a bit to above freezing and walking around town was more enjoyable. I knew it was going to be cold in Holland, but it has been colder than I expected this week. The good news is my definition of cold has changed, and I think I’ve acquired a higher tolerance level to the cold weather!!

On our way up to the flower market area for dinner, we spontaneously decided to get off the tram so that we could start the evening with a quick viewing of the Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum. It was 5:30 pm and our reservation was for 6:30 pm. I checked the hours for the museum and we had 30 minutes before closing and no kids with us. We could do it! The security guard thought we were crazy, but I told him we only needed 10 minutes to see Rembrandt’s work with our museum passes. And we did just that…headed straight upstairs and through the gift shop to see the magical masterpiece from 371 years ago! It was great going there at the end of the day when there was no one else really there. It was like our own private party!

We still had five minutes to see my favorite exhibit, the simplest of all and one that makes me smile.

It’s this cool clock with a video projection of a man inside who controls the minute hands with a dry erase marker and eraser, literally changing the clock minute by minute. It makes you aware of time passing and I absolutely love it, because it looks like nothing but makes you think.

We were out of the museum and back on a tram exploring more of the city before dinner.

Coming into Amsterdam before dusk was beautiful. I loved watching the changing night sky and bright lights.

We were on our way to enjoy an Indonesian rijstaafel, or rice table in English. Indonesian food is my favorite type of cuisine. A rice table is an assortment of several different small dishes, that everyone at the table shares. We probably tried 15 different types of food, including chili eggs, shrimp and tofu, red curry green beans, rendang, gado gado, mango salad, satay skewers, cucumber salad and a couple chicken dishes.

The dinner was delicious and fun to share, although hard to tell from these dimly lit pictures.

Hope you have a great, light filled weekend!

13Aug2012

Day 19: Vondelpark * Rijksmuseum * Houseboat * Tram

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We’re getting better at preparing for the day. Each kid carries a backpack and today I gave them each a checklist:

1. Backpack

2. Water Bottle

3. Light Rain Coat

4. Umbrella

5. Something to Read

All of these things are to help them take care of themselves. They can carry their own pack and their own jacket and always have something to drink. If they want to add more, they can, but they still have to carry it all day. Teaching them to take care of themselves while also being responsible for their own stuff!

We were happy to venture out to meet the Petersons again today. We met in the Museumplein and walked over to Vondelpark together. We got a later start than usual, and everyone was already hungry soon after we gathered. I had read about a cooking cafe for kids and both my youngest, and Kris’ youngest like to cook so I thought this would give us a destination to seek out in Vondelpark. I’m good at coming up with ideas, but not always so good with following up with the details! For example, I knew the name of the restaurant in VP (generally), but didn’t jot down the address, hoping to explore the park and venture upon it by chance. Not such a good idea when you have 8 hungry people! Eventually we found it after stopping to ask at least 3 strangers. But I think the kids had a good time making their own pizzas and ham and cheese croissants. It was a fun experience at the Kinderkookkafe.

After the kids refueled, they wandered over to a playground and enjoyed running around together in a new park. They found some fun swings where 3 people could swing at once. I loved seeing their smiles. The boys then disappeared for a while and we could see their shadowy figures through the trees. They found some tall pieces of wood and were building a teepee. I think they could have stayed for hours.

Weather reports showed that afternoon thunderstorms were quite possible so we had planned to check out the Rijksmuseum. The good news was that the rain never came. We still were able to walk around and enjoy the art at the museum. Luckily, only a part of the museum was open as the rest is under renovation. This proved well for the kids as their attention span for art is not that high. I actually enjoyed hearing their perspective about what they saw and what stood out. J and I kept trying to determine from what angle the light source was used to paint the layers of light and shadow. We never did agree, but I think that will help us to discover some new art research. Our family favorite exhibit was one from 2008, which was a rather unique and unusual Grandfather Clock, that was in the shape of a tall, grandfather clock, with a frosted glass face with dry erase numbers written on the face from the inside. Behind the glass, it appeared a man was inside the clock and counting the minutes passing by erasing the arms of the clock and re-writing them again. It was to show the passing of time and we all got a kick out of it. Of course we all loved Rembrandt’s Night Watch painting and discussed how the sword looked three-D, how we liked the shadow of the hand on the other man’s jacket, and the element of surprise with people’s faces hiding and peeking through the crowd.

After our brief tour of the museum, we played in the Museumplein again as the kids love the big, flat swing and wanted to share it with the Peterson kids.

If the kids are happy, I’m happy and so we stayed for awhile. We then walked to the tram and took it to visit the P’s houseboat, which was very cozy and nicely decorated in a Dutch theme with blue and white and red colors. I think it would be fun to stay on a vacation houseboat. However, I felt a bit sad for them, as the owner’s houseboat was parked directly in front of their vacation boat which completely obstructed the view of the water. They did have a small window portal from the bedroom to look off and see a bit of water, but if they wanted to see more, they had to wander over to the owner’s floating backyard or walk to the top and sit on top of the houseboat. They of course, were gracious and the owner was very kind to them, so no worries… The kids all had fun exploring and being in a new environment with their California friends.

I had fun sitting with Kris and just relaxing as I felt tired by the end of the day… staying up until 1 am watching the Olympic Closing Ceremonies was probably not such a good idea! Did you watch them too?

The kids and I soon said goodbye and found our way to a new tram stop and journeyed home on the Metro. On the tram, J asked me if I missed California yet. She said she did a little bit but knew that we weren’t going back any time soon, so she really didn’t think about it much. I told her we would feel home sick at times but that we’ll adapt and that we have to live in the moment, which she is doing. She is very smart and realizes that she must manage her expectations, even though she doesn’t know that is what she is doing. I believe that happiness comes from when your expectations are in alignment with your reality. She expects to live here and doesn’t expect to move back home, so she’s happy. Pretty simple. I shared with her the expression that the grass isn’t always greener, and she started to sing a Justin Bieber song about the same topic. It’s amazing, but I think she gets it. We are here now and our job is to enjoy BEING just where we are. As a family, we chose to come on this journey and so we are enjoying our green grass, so to speak, right here, right now. And we’re enjoying keeping in touch with our family and friends back home too. Little C especially loved talking to one of his BFFs this afternoon, as you can see by his smile.