Wednesday...a bit of Van Gogh on Vacation

Today we went to the Van Gogh museum. After 5 minutes, the kids were already anxious just to see the classics and get out, but luckily they had a great "Treasure Hunt" activity for the kids, and they both went their own way to find all of the answers. We didn't see them for about an hour, which was quite a nice way to visit a museum. There was so much info on his life and development as an artist. He started his training in Holland and much of his first 5 years of art are scenes from the farmlands and hard working people of this area. The second half of his life was mostly in Paris, and being there really changed his style. The kids got a post card as a prize for finishing the treasure hunt. These were their picks:

The area below is called Museumplein, which is obviously an area with Museums. Part of the Van Gogh museum is on the left in the round museum. Below is the Rijksmuseum which has the history of Amsterdam and Holland. We didn't think we could handle two museums in a day, so we settled on Van Gogh, which Danny and I really enjoyed.

This was a park at the Museumplein that the kids enjoyed. Unfortunately it is also where Isabelle sat her purse down, and someone took off with it :( She was sad to loose her camera and her iPod. We were glad she didn't have any money in there, and she will have to make more of her dramatic videos on our camera in the future.

Taylor found a great place to practice "Planking"!

These next photos are of random doorways. These were some of the coolest that I saw, but there are so many with different colorful tiles and designs. It is something unexpected.

These next two pictures are of Magna Shopping plaza which we drove past several times on the tram, but Danny wanted to stop and go inside. We later found out it was the central post office built in 1899.

The inside was pretty impressive, but all of the shops were small little unknown designer shops, and the mall wasn't very busy.