Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Amsterdammit
My Internet Explorer just went down after I'd written a long, funny post about my day in Amsterdam with my Mom, and I hate rewriting things, so this'll be another bullet point list.
- Raining in Den Haag, not raining in Amsterdam when we leave station. Starts raining (hard) as soon as we start walking. Stops raining when we go inside. Starts raining again as we leave. Continue till damp.
- Mother increasingly disconsolate at lack of good coffee in Holland. At Rough Guide's suggestion, go to Arnot's, 441 Singel, where the coffee is good. As are the sandwiches.
- Walk halfway across town to Stedelijk Museum (modern and contemporary art). Closed for refurbishment. Moved to temporary location by Central Station.
- Tram back across town, find museum in really ugly building apparently now inhabited by artists.
- None of the permanent collection is there, so no malevich, matisse, rauschenberg, judd, kiefer. But the price is the same.
- First floor devoted to best-designed books and photos by one photographer of famous Dutch authors. (I don't use scare quotes, but if I did, there would have been one around famous. If anybody who isn't Dutch has read any Dutch authors (of the last 100 years), please let me know - I'd be slightly amazed. I've read a detective writer, Janwillem van de Wettering, who's OK, but not much more.) Really disappointing.
- Second floor much better, restores my faith in Dutch curators. A great Vito Acconci show. Check out the video here. I particularly enjoyed swinging (1:20 in the clip) to jazz and Italians talking about cocks.
- Awesome huge portraits from Rineke Dijkstra, who I think is great. Here's one:
- On the 11th floor is 11, a very cool bar and restaurant with great views of Amsterdam, which is really a beautiful city when you're not in the rain. (Good thing Alan names his bars after street numbers, otherwise they'd all be called 0, 1 0r 2.)
- Tried to find Eenvistweevis, a restaurant that serves green eggs and ham, but the restaurant and the street it's on both seem to have disappeared--a very impressive double act--so wound up in the Red Light District ("Look Ma, a 14-inch dildo.") at an excellent Spanish restaurant called Centra. Another recommendation - Lange Niezel 29. Incidentally, Lange Niezel turns into Korte Niezel, which i don't think is a very helpful way of naming your streets.
- And that's that.
