June 15, 2016

I had to put The Donald’s brush as the blog photo, it’s perfect!

We made our trip to Rotterdam, and guess what?  We had a good time!  As the photo album shows, just outside the station we climbed a giant stairway to walk around the top of building to get views of Rotterdam.  We could actually see two other towns, Delft and Den Hague that we have visited on previous trips.  And that we will probably visit again.  After this excursion we took a tram from the station to the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen our first stop.  I’ll warn you that I took a lot of photos of paintings.  I take photos of other paintings by artists on the 1001 list; it’s part of being compulsive.  It is also a result of learning a little bit about artists and paintings while we’ve been on the hunt.  Plus what else am I going to do while walking around a museum full of paintings.  Sue always has to wait for me as she is able to be more discriminating about what she looks at.  This was another case where she was sitting in a room near the end waiting for me.  And of course I being intent on the paintings went right on through without seeing her.  She is used to this kind of behavior.  It almost goes without saying (but of course I’ll say it) this was another wonderful museum with a great collection.  It doesn’t have a list of famous paintings, but it has works by most of the significant artists from the 1400s to the mid-20^th century, and it was not crowded.

Then we were off to the next museum, the Rotterdam Kunsthal that was about a 5 minute walk.  We had lunch first in the museums café.  We both had the burger that had just about everything on it: tomatoes, red cabbage, cheese and bacon.  They were very good.  I don’t want to shock you but this museum wasn’t great.  It only has exhibitions, there apparently is not permanent collection.  The exhibition on display was by art students, so you might be able to guess what it was like.  Can you recall what some of the creations art students made when you were in high school?  That was my impression of most of the displays were “piles of stuff” on the floor.  Now maybe “installation art” was the theme, but having so many similar works was a bit numbing.  You can’t win them all.  So then it was back to Centraal and then a train home.

We are over the top when it comes to visiting museums and galleries, but what kind of things do you do when you visit a new city?  You can only do so much shopping.  So museums and galleries are what most people do.  We found it amusing that the Trip Advisor #1 and #2 attractions in Rotterdam are Centraal and Markthal.  The train station and a residence and office building with a large shopping and dining hall underneath.  In Rotterdam’s defense the old town was completely destroyed in WW II, so there is no old town, quaint feeling it is a modern city.

 

Rotterdam June 15 2nd try