Amsterdam - Take Two

As everyone may suspect we started our day at Bean and Bagels again.  We left Ellie to sleep in the hotel and took Alex with us for breakfast.  Ellie is taking a history class online during our summer vacation, which has required her to stay up late at night when she should be catching up on her sleep because of the jet lag.  So we thought a good morning rest would be helpful for her (and us).  We picked up a sweet bagel for her and took it to her.

After breakfast we returned to the hotel to pack up, wake up and feed Ellie.  After checking our luggage with the front desk, with our new found learnings about the public transportation, we jumped on the Metro and headed to town.  

As this was our last day in Amsterdam before heading to Italy, we jumped on the Hop on Hop off bus outside of the Metro and took it to the Artis Zoo.  This zoo is located int he centre of Amsterdam. It is the oldest zoo in the Netherlands and one of the oldest zoos in mainland Europe.  As it is so close to the city we were expecting quite a small zoo.  Boy, we were wrong -- It had an aquarium, planetarium, an arboretum, and 27 monumental buildings.  It was simply amazing.  

This zoo was built in 1882 on land leased from the city on condition that only a museum ever be built on it.  The zoo is absolutely beautiful - with gorgeous greenery and flowers everywhere.  When I say the landscaping is beautiful, it isn't in the normal sort of way when you are at zoos and other tourist attractions, it was almost natural.  

All the pictures taken at the zoo were taken by Ellie.  As both the girls love to take photos so much now, I often just sit and experience the sites we go to now and let them take all of our pictures.  I am sure we only saw 50% of the zoo, as it went on and on, but we had other things in the city that we wanted to do, so we left early.

The library - in the Rijk's Museum -
Not sure how we didn't loose Ellie here

The Rijksmuseum

 After the zoo, we took our Hop on Hop off back to Museum area and went to the Rijksmuseum.    This museum is a national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam.  It was founded in 1800 in The Hague but was moved to Amsterdam in 1808.  It is the also the largest art museum in the country with over 1 million objects from 1200-2000 among their total collections.  The one object we went to see was the Rembrandt's The Night Watch.    The museum was very crowded and was very much like a maze.  We lost our children twice in here, luckily we found them.  We had downloaded an app to help as our guide but did not find it useful as it would take 30 to 45 minutes per object at times.  If we had to do this over again, I would find a private tour to take us through the museum and describe the amazing collections.  We needed to know more of the history and what we were looking at.  Although collections were captivating, it was a bit overwhelming.

Rembrant's The Night Watch

We finished our visit by climbing the iconic "Iamsterdam" sign - where was impossible to get three individuals to look at me at the same time while people were not cross in front of me.  

Things we learned from this day

1. Do the zoo - it is worth the visit
2. Get a guided tour of the Rijks   Museum. 
3. Take a snap shot at the Amsterdam sign for sure
4. There are a lot of bikes in Amsterdam!