We started walking from our hotel to the Van Gogh museum. On the way we passed the Cow Parade store. This was pretty cool since we remember the Cow Parade from back when it was in New York decades ago. Big fiberglass painted cows at random spots in the city.

The Van Gogh museum was pretty amazing (and also had wood floors). While most of his best known works might be in other museums around the world there were plenty of great ones to view and admire.

There were also plenty of work from his contemporaries

It was particularly interesting to see things like a gallery of his influences or walls with his works surrounded by similar works by his contemporaries.

Like the Rijksmuseum this is a must see. We did hear a couple comment though while standing online that it always sells out so maybe book tickets in advance.

From there we wanted to see the Ann Frank house

With so much else to do we decided not to book the tour in advance and that we'd just walk by. We already knew the story so thought we'd rather spend the time in the WWII Resistance museum and the Jewish Museum to learn about things we were less familiar with but would walk by the house to see it and the neighborhood.

On the way we needed sustenance so we sought out a highly recommended cookie shop but were thwarted by a huge line.

It looked like it would be well over a 45 minute wait. Sorry, we don't do that anymore. We found something else, walked by the Ann Frank house, did some more wandering, had a great light lunch then took a break back at our hotel.

Then the Jewish Museum. It had two parts with two additional ones opening in March - the museum, on the site of former Ashkenazi synagogues, the Portuguese Synagogue across the street and the two to come pieces, the Hollandsche Schouwburg and the National Holocoust Museum. The next post will cover the Portuguese Synagogue but to be honest, the museum didn't thrill either of us. The general Judaism section was fine but not inspirational and the organization had you jumping from station to station in what appeared to be random order. They had some interesting artifacts and we learned a bit but it wasn't super engaging to us. The Holocaust section also was pretty subdued. To be honest, the WWII Resistance museum painted a better picture of the Holocaust as did the Brussels museum. I'd also rank the NY and DC ones better. As to the straight Jewish part we also liked the Brussels museum more and I'll put in a plug here for the Weitzman Museum in Philly.

In all fairness though this isn't counting the Portuguese Synagogue which was included in admission but we couldn't go to yet since it was closed for Simchat Torah and who knows what the forthcoming two sites will add to the overall experience

Staying on our cultural theme, we've been noticing many bagel shops in Amsterdam so we thought we'd try one.

We ended up taking out form Soup En Zo, a really good soup place and pairing the soups with Bagels from Tony's NY Bagels across the street. The soups were great and the bagels were surprisingly good. Not too large, good chew - better than some lesser NY ones.

That was it for day 3. Day 4 started with the Amsterdam Maritime Museum. Really interesting. Some good history of the region as well as boat and boat history. I really liked the modalities used. Many galleries combined wonderful art - paintings in particular to tell the story of Amsterdam

They also had a replica of an old 18th century trade ship that you could explore.

Pretty cramped particularly when you consider that statistically people form the Netherlands are the tallest in the world.

They also had old maps:

Ship models:

and much more.

For lunch we then walked out to Java Eiland where we passed the Meta offices but Batya didn't go in.

And then back near the Hotel to finally visit the Portuguese Synagogue.

Wow. While we were disappointed in the Jewish Museum, this part, which was right across the street made it super worth it. You basically walked around the outer perimeter of the site going in and out of buildings where various religious functions occurred and got to hear about the function and specific history from past congregations. We also went in to explore the sanctuary. Again, wow. Big, beautiful, candle lit (that is, no electricity) and in fact is still functioning.

As much as the previous days museum visit was meh, this pushed the overall experience over the top.

That's it for today except for a new place for dinner which we'll head out for soon. Tomorrow, the plan is to go to the Hague for the Escher Museum and then Wednesday, back to NYC.