Author: Grubb

Post by Grubb. Years ago I taught a class about art design in film with an architect who turned me onto Bjorke Ingles, so I was eager to see Bjorke’s 8House.  Winner of the Housing category at the World Architecture Festival in 2011, 8House has 476 homes divided into townhouses.  “The entire complex is combined by a…

Post by Grubb. On my way to grab a cup of coffee and a pastry, I went by a seaside promenade where some adventurous young people were taking a dip.  I don’t know what the water temperature was where they were swimming, but it was around 49 degrees outside.   As they egged each other on it…

post by Grubb Our friend Hendrik met us on the terrace outside Pavlov’s Bar and Grill in Den Haag this afternoon.  Hendrik van Leeuwen is an artist (hendrikvanleeuwen.nl) who teaches painting and reviews art for numerous publications.  Along with his wife Gina, he was to have accompanied us to the Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum on Sunday,…

Post by Grubb. This morning I thought I’d go next door to the coffee shop/bakery and bring back a cappuccino (my third) to enjoy on the patio outside the back of our apartment.  Again, to demonstrate the trusting nature of this inner-city neighborhood, I was allowed to take the ceramic cup of cappuccino with me since…

Post by Grubb. Remembering our trip here in 2016, I vowed not leave Den Haag without having a herring Broodje.  The herring stand was outside the courtyard of the Mauritshuis, the museum we visited back in ‘16.  I had a brief notion that we might drop in the Mauritshuis and check out a few masterpieces to see…

Post by Grubb. One the exhibits in Kunsthal Rotterdam was by a woman named Piccinini whose silicon molded figures suggest what might have happened if Dr. Moreau hadn’t met his untimely end.   Below are Ella’s favorites

Post by Grubb. Kids at the Kunsthal Rotterdam playing with giant inflatable billiard balls on a bouncy plastic table.

Post by Grubb Inside the reflective glass bowl of the Depot is a six floor atrium divided into translucent levels where exhibits are sectioned off into glass compartments.   Art displayed in visible engineering (above) The best part of the Depot experience was the app that let me read the bar code placed by the window…

At the top of the Depot, with stands of Aspen and fir reflected in the glass walls of the museum’s restaurant, there is a 360 degree view of the Rotterdam skyline.

We had just left the Sprinter train at Rotterdam Centraal and were walking by one of the main city canals when we saw a fisherman struggling with a highly agitated duck floundering at the other end of his line.  It seems the duck had unfortunately beat the fish to the bait.  After trying to reel the duck…

Post by Grubb. There’s the old school red brick facade a la the Smithsonian dressed up like a villa at the Rijksmuseum, and there’s the post-modern steely sheen of the reflective glass bowl at the Depot.  It’s terra cotta versus terra nueva.

That’s a lot of Vermeers making up the current exhibit at the Rijksmuseum—27, to be exact.  We were early for the appointed time printed on our tickets, but were allowed in.  We followed the blue line up the stairs to the darkened rooms where the paintings were positioned far apart on ink black walls under faint halos…

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Post by Grubb The snack of choice in these parts is the French fry.  People walk the streets with snow cone cups spilling over with the starchy delight cut not like the slender MacDonalds striplets, but in chunky fingers of potato heaven.

Post by Grubb Ella smells the flowers in the same spot where, around four hundred years ago, Vermeer painted a couple of children playing on the flagstones in front of the house famous for its red window shutter.