Public Telephones
by unaS
NOT my favorite - the opposite.
Don't depend on using public telephones in Amsterdam!!
There are different phone companies and they use different cards for their public phones.
The VVV (Tourist Info Office) sells the green cards. There are 10 telephones just outside of the VVV office across the street from the Amsterdam Centraal train station. On two days running NONE of them worked!!
The telephone inside of the train station is a red telephone - green cards won't work. Couldn't find a place to buy a red card.
I missed meeting 3 different people that I met here in VT because I couldn't call them and make arrangements. On this tip, the public phone situation in Amsterdam is my LEAST fond memory of that otherwise marvelous city, I'm sorry to say.
Mixed city
by chancay
Amsterdam offers a great mixture between traditions and modernity.
A mixture between red light zones around the station (one of the most famous in the world, I think) and high level culture, great museums (Van Gogh, Rembrandt........)
A mixture between more than 2000 house boats , traditional houses and modern constructions. I like very much the variety Amsterdam offers like I mentioned already above. Amsterdam is a modern european metropolis but you don´t feel to be in a overcrowded big city. There´s a lot of quietness as well.
I was only there for one night...
by kelta
I was only there for one night because our plane coming from Brazil couldn't land in London as there was black ice on the runway. I didn't know much about the place the last time. The people were nice, the food was weird and but I always planned to go back again.... and so I did.
Between Rieksmuseum and Van Gogh museum
by chancay
Van Gogh:
"Vincent van Gogh was born near Brabant, the son of a minister. In 1869, he got a position at the art dealers, Goupil and Co. in The Hague, through his uncle, and worked with them until he was dismissed from the London office in 1873. He worked as a schoolmaster in England (1876), before training for the ministry at Amsterdam University (1877). After he failed to get a post in the Church, he went to live as an independent missionary among the Borinage miners.
"He was largely self-taught as an artist, although he received help from his cousin, Mauve. His first works were heavily painted, mud-colored and clumsy attempts to represent the life of the poor (e.g. Potato-Eaters, 1885, Amsterdam), influenced by one of his artistic heroes, Millet. He moved to Paris in 1886, living with his devoted brother, Theo, who as a dealer introduced him to artists like Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec. In Paris, he discovered color as well as the divisionist ideas which helped to create the distinctive dashed brushstrokes of his later work (e.g. Pere Tanguy, 1887, Paris). He moved to Arles, in the south of France, in 1888, hoping to establish an artists' colony there, and was immediately struck by the hot reds and yellows of the Mediterranean, which he increasingly used symbolically to represent his own moods (e.g. Sunflowers, 1888, London, National Gallery). He was joined briefly by Gauguin in October 1888, and managed in some works to combine his own ideas with the latter's Synthetism (e.g. The Sower, 1888, Amsterdam), but the visit was not a success. A final argument led to the infamous episode in which Van Gogh mutilated his ear. "In 1889, he became a voluntary patient at the St. Remy asylum, where he continued to paint, often making copies of artists he admired. His palette softened to mauves and pinks, but his brushwork was increasingly agitated, the dashes constructed into swirling, twisted shapes, often seen as symbolic of his mental state (e.g. Ravine, 1889, Otterlo). He moved to Auvers, to be closer to Theo in 1890 - his last 70 days spent in a hectic program of painting. He died, having sold only one work, following a botched suicide attempt. His life is detailed in a series of letters to his brother (published 1959)."
- From "The Bulfinch Guide to Art History"
The Rijksmuseum... Jan Steen
by sim1
Jan Havicksz. Steen (1626-1679)
A self-portrait
This is a self-portrait from 1670, and it is Jan Steen's only serious self-portrait. He regularly depicted himself in his own paintings, usually in company, in a comical role, as a drunkard, a victim of deception or - as in the 'Merry family' - playing the bagpipes.
You can view the painting more closely on :
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/ariadata/image/SK/Z/SK-A-383.Z.jpg
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WL organ
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Gareth outside this very expensive pub
My husband enjoying lovely subjects to photograph
