Wednesday, 8 May to Saturday, 11 May
Ben drove us to the airport for our flight to Amsterdam via Dubai. We left at 2100 on Wednesday and arrived in Amsterdam at 1400 on Thursday after a 3 hour stopover and winding the clocks back 8 hours. Hotel JL No76 on Jan Luijkenstraadt was close to the Rijksmuseum and the tram line and proved a good base for exploring.
We were up at 0530, so after breakfast had plenty of time for a walk around the nearby Vondel Park before going to the Rijksmuseum to line up for tickets at 0830.
This museum is currently featuring a special exhibit about Rembrandt on the 350th anniversary of his death. The museum reopened in 2013 after a 10 year renovation that cost 500 million dollars and is an impressive home for the vast collection of Dutch art.
After spending an hour and a half at the Rembrandt exhibit we then enjoyed just a small fraction of the remaining artwork all with the aid of an audio guide.
After lunch we walked around the city streets with the aid of Rick Steve’s audio guides. It is certainly a beautiful well preserved city.
We love bikes and the bike infrastructure here is very impressive.
On Saturday morning we did another audio guide assisted walk, this time around the famous red light district.
After lunch we headed off to board the Quo Vadis, our home for the next 11 days.