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…
Category: Sampling Scandinavia
Rotterdam from above
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.
Hooking the duck
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…
Museum Entrances
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.
Reflections in Rotterdam
Thank you again Esther
We planned to spend the day in Rotterdam and Esther suggested we visit the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen. This is the world’s first publicly accessible art storage facility. 173 years of art collecting. More than 152,000 objects housed together, arranged in fourteen storage compartments with five different climates. This place is amazing and Grubb will…
Our Den Haag apartment
Our ground floor, one bedroom apartment is at Papestraat 3 in Den Haag. It is full of natural light from tall windows fronting onto a small garden area. It is comfortable as in the bed is comfy for sleeping and the couches are comfy for sitting. The apartment is in a pedestrian only area and…
There is a reason we don’t stay in Amsterdam
Many tourists stay in Amsterdam and take day trips to Delft, Haarlem, Rotterdam, We much prefer to stay in Delft or Den Haag and make a day trip to Amsterdam. It’s not that far. From Den Haag central station, you can be in south Amsterdam in 40 minutes or so by train. Anyway… Today was the…
All the Vermeer’s in…Amsterdam
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…
Vermeer’s Delft with Esther
Post by Ella We go to see the big Vermeer exhibit tomorrow in Amsterdam so it was fitting that today we visited the Museum Prinsenhof’s exhibit on Vermeer’s Delft. Esther met us at Cafe Barbaar in Delft for cappuccinos and pastry. Then the three of us strolled to the Prinsenhof just a few feet away….
You know you are in Holland when…
Post by Grubb
Albert Heijn
Post by Ella One of the biggest grocery chains in the Netherlands is Albert Heijn. Akin to a Ralph’s or Smiths. If we need a little bit of this and a little bit of that, we go to Albert Heijn. Last time I was here (in 2016), I brought my Albert Heijn shopping bag home…
The Dutch Nacho
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.
The Little Street
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.
The Dreamscape of Delft
Post by Grubb Delft is a compact, tidy town bisected by a canal and its grid line tributaries. Vermeer caught its quiet domestic beauty in “The Little Street”; he captured the play of light and shadow of the cloud drift in his “View of Delft”. These paintings are more than four-hundred years old, but the neighborhoods we’ve…