Amsterdam 🇳🇱

According to my coffee swilling, Istanbullian fortune teller, it’s all waiting for me in Amsterdam… only I’m assuming he means on a different trip. This time around the only thing waiting for me is a date with Vincent Van Gogh.

I make it into the city early enough to join the queue for Van Stapele cookies which were a firm favourite my last time here. I kicked off my 30th trip around the Sun with these cookies not far off this time last year and it strikes me just how far I’ve come in a year.

Cookie in hand, I amble through the streets before most of the city is out of bed. It might be a quiet Sunday morning but aggressive bell ringing from bike riders still fills the air while tourists are shouted at for wandering into the bike lanes. Ahh… Amsterdam.

I reach museum square and make a beeline for the Van Gogh museum. I missed this one last time and I’m
so excited to finally see it for real. The exhibition is a walk through Van Gogh’s life as much as his work. From his earliest paintings, his friendships with other artists of time, to his most famous paintings and his mental health. It’s a beautiful ode to the artist, albeit a melancholy one which is hauntingly fitting giving that the artist was partly diagnosed with ‘melancholia’, what would nowadays be classed as severe depression.
The art is shown along side letters and correspondence to and from Van Gogh. It shows his thoughts and perspective on the world, a glimpse into the man and the inspiration behind some of his most beautiful works.

Van Gogh museum done, I start to venture towards the train station until I spot a Pathé sign. Pathé are a film company, you might recognise their logo from the start of a huge number of British/American films, especially kids films like chicken run, but here in the Amsterdam, they’re a cinema chain that just happens to own one of the oldest cinemas which happens to be just around the corner. The Theatre Tuschinski opened in October 1921 and has retained much of its original art deco style. It’s a beautiful building inside and out and will come as absolutely no surprise that it’s the home of most red carpet events in Amsterdam.Read more