Brugge and Brussels

Sunday had us packing up again and heading to Brugge.  (They get mad when you call it Bruges because that's the French way, and they are pretty Dutch here.)  It was an adorable little town and probably one of my favorite stops on our trip.

The first thing we did is head to a Cathedral to see the Brugge Madonna by Michelangelo.  This is the only one of his statues to leave Italy during his lifetime.  I have never seen an Michelangelo in person before and it is amazing.  The faces are so lifelike you forget you are looking at marble.

Next we visited a museum that held this painting by Jan van Eyck.  The picture looks horrible because they had this awful sneeze guard in front of it.  But in person the painting was so much better than I expected.  Even really close it looked like real life, not oil paint.

  van Eyck even went so far as to paint in the separation of fibers on the rug as it folded over the stairs.  Definitely one of those works that is well worth the trip to see it in person.  (Or if you ever get a chance to see any van Eyck, take advantage.  No one does what he did with oil.)

The next day we had off.  And thank god for that because we were all exhausted at that point.  Plus Brugge is a good city to wander around.  Me and Anna decided to climb the belfry.  All 366 tiny worn down steps.

 This what the climb was like.  There was actually a rope running up the middle to hold on to.  Plus there was only really room for one person at a time, yet people were going up and down.  (As I tried to take a picture of Anna this random guy decided to be involved.)

But when we got to the top it was totally worth it for the view of Brugge.

We rounded out the day with some raspberry beer and Belgian chocolate.  Sounds just as nice as it was.

The next two days I spent in bed with the stomach flu.  So I missed going to Ghent.  I'm pissed about that but I guess it just gives me an excuse to come back.  We then traveled to Brussels which is kind of a dirty city.  But there was a cute part of town where all the old buildings are.

Brussels does have a long history of Art Nouveau.  We went the Hortas museum (which is his old house).  He was an architect.  The house was absolutely beautiful.

We wondered through the main square where a flower carpet had been laid out for Assumption Day. 

That night we had a farewell dinner and caught the light show in the square.  We all said our goodbyes, sad to be going, but at the same time happy that the exhausting trip was over.  Well, for some of us.  Now off to Paris for a few days then to London before my final trek home.  I can't wait to be able to use my phone again.

Antwerp

Our last week started a little early, on Friday, as we moved out of our dorms in Amsterdam and took a train with all our stuff to Antwerp, Belgium.

This was the train station.  Amazing.

We took all our stuff to the Hotel Leonardo.  It looked really cool but we soon discovered that the heads are a tad bit freaky at night.

The city of Antwerp has a legend that a giant was terrorizing the city and a guy, in order to stop him, cut off his hand and threw it into the river.  Although I'm not sure why the giant couldn't do anything with just one hand missing.

We took a walk around the city and went to a cathedral.

There were tons of Rubens there.  They are pretty amazing in real life.

I also found a grave of my ancestors (?)

After the cathedral we went to an outdoor sculpture park.  At least until the guards on bikes threw us out.

Dinner that night was at Chi-Chi's.  I thought it was going to be the same restaurant as the one that used to be in Michigan, but no go.  And I was really looking forward to those corn cakes.

On Saturday we headed to a museum.  (I could look up the name, but frankly, I'm too tired.)  This museum held a nice mix of old and new stuff.

It's most famous piece is this one by Jean Fouquet.  His Virgin is really strange looking.  (Plus her boobs don't match.)

After that we headed to the roof where we got a nice view of the city.

As we were heading to the next museum we walked by the gay pride parade.  I've seen better, but still entertaining.

The next museum was a contemporary art museum that had an exhibit by the American artist, Jimmy Durham.  Half way through the exhibit my professor, Steve, came up to me and said, "Well.  This guy is a smart ass."  I told him that's why I liked him.

After that we all went to big group dinner.  There I tried horse meat.  That's right, horse meat.  It was amazingly delicious.  After dinner a few of us walked to a tunnel that goes under the river.  Our professor said that it is an amazing Art Deco tunnel that was well worth the visit.  Looked like every subway station I've been too.  Granted, the smell was slightly better.

Next we headed to the ferris wheel that was right outside our hotel.  Couldn't see much but we jammed to the strange 40s music they were playing.  After that we were super tired and had to get up early to head to Bruge, so bed it was.

Week seven - Almost done

This week has been a rough one in Amsterdam, not just with the weather.  My week started out with a horrible migraine that had me missing a few days of class.  But it was all stuff we had visited before so I don't think I missed much.

On Thursday we went to Haarlem again to visit an exhibit called "To the Sea".  Kind of boring because we had seen it before.

On Friday we went back to the Hague and visited the same museum we went to last time.  Thank god we did because there was some amazing contemporary art there that I didn't get a chance to see last time.

Plus I really wanted to see this bed again.  (That's Anna in the dark)

At this point I am getting a little sick of Amsterdam.  (Things I never thought I would say.)  We have been here for seven weeks now and I feel like I live here, but not completely.  I am really looking forward to going to Belgium on Friday.  A change of pace will be nice.  I am also looking forward to coming back to America.  I think I'm going to sleep for days.  Then I am going to go to Outback Steakhouse and fill up on free bread before a huge meal and get unlimited free refills on my Coke.

 The Hague is right by the ocean so a few of us decided we needed to hang out at the beach for awhile.

We wandered around the boardwalk for awhile before stopping to get some amazing fish and chips.  Because what else do you get at the beach?

This is Allison and Anna with a very sad statue.

While we were eating a tiny little thunderstorm rolled in and forced us inside the restaurant for awhile.  Thank god they had hot chocolate.

When the storm passed we headed down to the shore to watch the sunset.  For such a annoying week it ended pretty great.  Now I just have to crank out this paper so I can enjoy Belgium, France, and England.

Is it Rembrandt?, The Hague, and Rotterdam

This week started out with a guest lecturer (wearing awesome shoes I might add).  He basically believes that most paintings said to be Rembrandts are actually done by his students.  Really he was kind of an asshole who really liked to listen to himself talk and had quite an ego.  But I think you have to have an ego to be spouting some crazy theories about centuries dead artists.

We spent a lot of time in front of this painting.  It is considered the pride of the Netherlands.  (Don't worry if you don't get why, neither do I.)  It is the Night Watch by Rembrandt.  He pointed out all the sex in the painting.

Such as the shadow of the main guy's hand grabbing at the crotch of the guy next to him while he holds a huge spear thing.  A bit of a reach (no pun intended), but at least he actually agreed that Rembrandt painted this painting.

On Wednesday we visited the Hague (a city) and the Gemeentemuseum.  It has a really great collection of modern and contemporary art.

One of their exhibitions was of this guy's amazing sculptures.  My favorite though was this bed where the curtains were made of crystals and there was a crystal crown on top.

Then I walked into a room and saw Orville! I think I gasped out loud.  For those who don't know what this is I have included a video.

They also had a exhibition about Mondrian.  It included this painting.  Which I have to say is one of the four or five I actually like of Mondrian's.  Just don't tell my professor.

I skipped on Thursday.  Sue me, I'm tired and didn't want to go on an architecture tour.

On Friday we went back to Rotterdam.  First we went to the NAi (the Netherlands Architecture Institute).

I spent the whole time in the kid's section drawing, building with legos, and coloring.  There were these awesome cutouts that you could color and build into your own city.

They even included a pile of dog poop.  How nice of them. (Sorry, it was hard to get the poop in focus).

Next we went to the Sonneveld House Museum.  It is a house where these rich people lived from the 30s to the 50s.

We got to wear these awesome shoes covers to protect the floors.

The entire house was very modern at the time it was built.  It had crazy things like dumbwaiters and ten shower heads in each of the showers.  It was very ahead of its time, but really all we wanted to do while there was act out Mad Men and have cocktails.

The best part was this little lamp which looked like the families hiding place for the KKK hoods when not in use.

That night I stuck around in Rotterdam to watch the Battle of the Drums.  Three different drum/brass cores played.  It was amazing.  Especially watching kids being ghetto in Dutch.  Some words are the same in both languages.

Eventually the rain started and this was all I could see.  Leave me to be stuck in a rain storm in a white shirt the only day I don't bring either a raincoat or a sweater.  I was not a good girl scout today.