Amsterdam, Part II: Flowers, Art, and Other Pretty Things

Geez. This is no way to run a blog. Okay, so we went to Paris, where I made Ceej tote around my laptop all day for five days just hoping to find WiFi (French pronunciation: weefee) so that I could update. Well, no such luck. It was out of order at both places we tried! Then, of course, I got some sort of food poisoning (we'll blame it on the European restaurants' questionable hygiene practices), which stuck around for six lovely days. It was at its worst throughout our entire visit with Sandra, Tobias, and baby Anton in Germany. I can't say that I made the best first impression on them.

Since then, we've popped over to Barcelona for a weekend and started what will be a really annoying and exhausting month of school. (We have a bunch of papers due at the end of April, then a little chill time before our finals in mid-May.) But that's good news for you, since looming assignments call for procrastination at its best. That includes cooking extravagant and time-consuming dinners, keeping my room immaculate, and catching up on my blogging.

Alright, so, back to Amsterdam. What I love about this city is the same thing that I enjoyed so much when I visited New Orleans: art is everywhere. It is constantly evolving and growing in a community full of people who appreciate beauty and creativity in their everyday routines. As you already know, the Dutch get crafty with their bikes, making them visually appealing as well as practical. But they keep plenty of other pretty things around them as well.

First of all, they dig their fresh flowers. (HA! Get it?) This goes back hundreds of years. In the fifteenth century or so, they started importing tulips from Turkey, with prices for the rarest varieties climbing so high that there was eventually a devastating crash in the market. (Tulips in floral still lifes forever after symbolized the dangers of greed and speculation.) Well, they've got that all under control now, and Amsterdam is home to massive flower markets where you can buy all sorts of bulbs and blooms.



Flowers also pop up in most of the local art, like in the gold-leafed print I bought from this handsome lad…



And in much of the artwork in this itsy-bitsy gallery near the Anne Frank House. I spent lots of money here.



Another good place to see artlife is at the Dam Square, Amsterdam's equivalent of the Grand Place. People create elaborate costumes from all kinds of mixed media and then collect euros from tourists who want to photograph them. Well, Lucy and I shelled out plenty of coins at the Dam Square. We were especially excited to find a few artists just getting ready for the day. (See way more pictures of this and the rest of Amsterdam in my album.)








This is how you know that Amsterdam must have artistic skills running through its tap water: even the ugly stuff is pretty. Everywhere we turned, fantastic graffiti covered the walls.




Actually, I think it is very possible that the Dutch are naturally super artistic. The area of the Netherlands and northern Belgium was one of the two centers of European art for centuries (with the other being Italy). Some schools you may have heard of are the Flemish Primitives and the Dutch Masters… not to mention the Surrealists, the Art Nouveau movement, and the Amsterdam School of Architecture. Wowza.

We've had the chance to see an incredible amount of this art in museums around the Netherlands and Belgium. But it's nearly midnight here, and I'm hoping to drag myself out for a run tomorrow morning, so I'll stop for now. If you're very lucky, I'll write to you tomorrow about the museums we've seen. Cross your fingers, and bonne nuit!