Amsterdam

While Taffy and his cousins were off bribing officials in Budapest last weekend, I went to Amsterdam. Before you get all excited, like the people I was working with, no, I didn't get high. (Vicki, I can almost hear your disappointment.)
I had decided that I was going to be a British/American tourist and not bother to learn any local phrases at all. This was fine as the people of Amsterdam all speak perfect English. Their transport system is easy to use and their ticket machines and announcements all have English components.
First stop on Saturday morning was the Flower Market. Ma would like it there. The stalls have row upon row of bulbs and seeds of all sorts of flowers. They also had some bunches of flowers, wooden flowers and quite a lot of cactii (including aloe vera plants! I didn't buy one though. Transportability.)
Next stop was the Rijksmuseum. It contrasts greatly with the Van Gogh museum in that it is housed in a beautiful old building whereas the Van Gogh museum is a hideous concrete structure.
The Rijksmuseum holds a lot of art from the Golden Age, when the Dutch were a force in the world and the East and West India Companies dominated trade. There were a lot of pieces that were either from Asia or had been heavily influenced by Asian work - intricately carved Indonesian woodwork and Chinese porcelain.
I was surprised by the dullness of The Nightwatch. I don't know what I was expecting but it isn't a piece that stands out as a great masterpiece. I think I like some of Rembrandt's other pieces better.
I didn't realise that Van Gogh only painted for 10 years (with 800+ paintings and >1000 drawings during that time) and that he died at 36. From his self portraits, I always thought he was older. The museum is organised into his various periods so that you can walk from his dark years through to the bright colours (especially yellow) in the last few years. They also had a lot of his drawings that were really great (some done on backs of menus and scraps of paper).
The weather held out for me for the whole weekend and I was able to wander along the canals to look at the houses, the houseboats and the abundance of art galleries.
I stopped in at one of the diamond houses and viewed some diamonds. The lady showed me a few diamonds of various grades of colour, which, when you put in a setting, you can't tell which is which. Only when you put them on white paper can you see that one is quite yellow and the others are blue-white. She also showed me a green diamond, which I was tempted to buy. Thought about it overnight and decided against it.
I found out this week that my cousin is in London studying for a Masters. She has been here since September and has only just contacted me 5 months later. What the...?!
This week was my last week on the project in Dewsbury. The EHS team gave me a present to remember them by: a Chuck-a-duck (a gun that shoots little ducks out - similar to the Chicken Shooter that we had been playing with) and a Monster notebook (I had been using Monster post-it notes instead of normal rectangular ones during our process mapping). Very nice. Even the wrapping paper had Monsters on it. I am off to France next week to the middle of nowhere.
Some photos of Amsterdam in the usual place.