Amsterdam, take 2

I spent the last three days in Amsterdam with my good friends Max and Chris. It was a lot of fun and I remembered my camera this time! The weather was a bit warmer, which was a welcome change from chilly Denmark.

I arrived on Thursday night and met up with Max and Chris at the central train station. From there, it was a short walk to where we were staying - with Max's aunt Jacqueline. She lives in the Red Light District. Yes, this sounds super sketch, but it was actually a quite nice neighborhood. Because of lots of delays, my flight had gotten in pretty late, so we walked around a bit and then went to bed.

The first activity on the schedule for Friday was the Van Gogh museum. Sorry, no pictures here, cameras weren't allowed in the museum. The exhibit was nicely arranged in chronological order, so you could see how much his style changed and evolved over time. We saw a few of the really famous paintings, like Sunflowers, and The Potato Eaters. One thing I thought was really interested was that they occasionally had paintings by other artists who had influenced Van Gogh mixed in. They placed them in a way so that you could see the similarities/influences between their work and Van Gogh's. There were also several exhibits about other artists. My favorite was one of old lithographs. They were very intricate and surreal. Finally, there was a section about how they analyze the paintings to verify their authenticity. They used Scanning Electron Microscopy and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis (to determine what elements are present, and thus what types of pigment were used), which are two techniques I use very often! I got very nerdily excited about this. After the Van Gogh museum, we hit up a large flea market and did some quality wandering. We then had some delicious Thai food with Jacqueline, and finished off the night with beers in a small brew pub.

On Saturday, we returned to the flea market and looked at lots of old stuff. The selection of items there was incredible - everything from old books, random houseware crap, cameras, and wedding dresses! Then, we went to the science museum. It is the large blue, ship-like building in the background of this picture, where Max is not paying attention:
This museum was great! They had a lot of fun exhibits. One of the coolest was a huge Rube Goldberg machine, which is an over-engineered machine that uses lots of complicated steps to accomplish a simple task.
There was a very large and very creepy animatronic robot that talked to you as you walked by:
Finally, there was a large exhibit on puberty and the science of sex!
There was even a gallery of orgasm faces. Oh those crazy Dutch!

On Sunday, we headed up to North Amsterdam, which required taking a ferry. We were up there to go to an art walk, in a neighborhood where there was lots of galleries. These galleries were all supposed to be open, so you could go in and see the artists working and such. Unfortunately, only a few galleries were open. Damn lazy europeans, always closing things on Sundays. Anyways, we had a nice walk and got to see a different part of Amsterdam. Here's a picture from the ferry dock:
And my two favorite boys:

After eating dinner, it was time for me to head home. My flight got in slightly early to Copenhagen, so I sprinted through the whole airport to catch a train that would enable me to get home at 2:30 AM, rather than 4 AM. I caught this train, and was very excited, until the train got to Copenhagen's central station and we learned that the train would be delayed at least 1 hour because someone had jumped in front of a train at a station down the line. I finally arrived in Aarhus at 4:45 AM ish. I had planned to walk home, since there are no buses at that hour, but was so tired and cold that I ended up taking an expensive taxi home. Travel snafus aside, the weekend was great and completely worth it!

Also, a special shout out to Kat Perry, who is my number 1 fan!

Lauryn