Amsterdam: It Helps to Plan Ahead but All Is Not Lost If You Don't

We spent most of Monday in transit--getting up early to finish packing and check out of the apartment, taxi to the airport and then wait at the gate for three hours because we had allowed plenty of time for traffic or whatever and then it turned out that our flight was an hour late. We arrived at the small, friendly Aalders Hotel in Amsterdam in mid-afternoon, got settled and lay down for a rest (I was very tired after an insomniac night paired with the early start). Then out to a lovely seafood restaurant nearby, and then an early bedtime.

The logic behind this stop in Amsterdam is that our long international flight from Europe to home tends most of the time to be from Amsterdam to Salt Lake City (except on those occasions when we are already in Paris and take the direct connection from Paris to Salt Lake). That flight leaves Amsterdam around 10 a.m., and if we're starting the day in London or Turin or anywhere else, we have to get up around 3 a.m. to make the connection. It finally occurred to Steve when he was planning this trip that we could avoid the significant unpleasantness involved in that whole thing by making the transition to Amsterdam a few days earlier, and that we could then actually spend a bit of time in a pleasant city that neither of us has been in for decades.

The reason for Steve's selection of this little hotel is that it is very close to the Museumplein (Plein means square, in the sense of piazza) where all the significant museums are located. Neither of us had time to read any guide books before the trip started, and once we were underway we were focussed on Italy, so it wasn't until a few days ago that Steve read the guidebook for Amsterdam and discovered that we should have--months ago--booked tickets to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum blockbuster show "Alle Rembrandts." The show, timed to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death in 1669, is entirely works by Rembrandts from the museum's own collection, and it's all 22 paintings that they own, all 60 drawings, and a selection of the best examples of prints, more than 300.

It looked as though we would have to miss both, but we did not give up all hope. At the hotel, they said we would probably be able to get into the Rijksmuseum to see all the rest of the museum, though probably not the Rembrandt show. But today we got up early for us and were in line at the museum before it opened at 9 a.m. to see what we could see. And it turned out that they do have some tickets that are set aside for walk-ins each day, and that for the best chance of getting them one should arrive early--which we had done. So we were lucky, and we spent the next two-plus hours at this monumental exhibition, to be addressed in a subsequent post.

After finishing with the Rembrandts we did some more of the museum before going to lunch at the lovely one-star restaurant that is outside the museum's entrance but actually is the ground floor directly below the exhibition space where the show we had just seen is located. After lunch we went back to the museum--the entrance ticket lets you go in and out all day the same day--and saw some more, including Rembrandt's "Night Watch," which is too large and fragile to be moved even within the same museum and remains at the end of The Hall of Honor, along the sides of which are their three Vermeers, several works by Franz Hals, and other stars of the Dutch painting universe. After that we were just worn out so we headed back towards the hotel.

As we walked, we discussed the possibility of getting to the Van Gogh museum early, hoping for a repetition of the good luck we had had today. I suggested that perhaps we could go by the museum just then and ask, to see if there was any chance at all of getting walk-in tickets, and if there wasn't, we could sleep later. In front of the museum there were some of their staff, so we asked one of them about it. She said no, there were never tickets available at the museum in the morning, but that at 5 p.m. the day before, each day a small number of tickets became available online, and that they went very fast. Well!

We went back to the hotel and collapsed--we rested, checked email and so forth for a while --and as it got close to 5:00 I located the page for ordering tickets. As the time on all the cities of my iPhone's world clock app changed to the new hour, I refreshed the page and --- amazingly, there were some tickets for the eighth! I clicked instantly and, to make a long story short, after some glitches I was able to order two tickets for 9:00. Amazing! We will see the Van Gogh museum tomorrow.

We don't have access to a printer here but the museum accepts tickets on phones. We were less prepared for this visit than for most of the traveling we have done in recent years, but we seem to have got away with being negligent tourists.