Exploring Amsterdam - the Van Gogh Museum
Exploring Amsterdam - the Vincent Van Gogh Museum
While in Amsterdam we made a point to hit a number of the touristy attractions such as: the Heineken experience, Kat Kabinet and the Van Gogh museum. It's important to see the popular attractions when visiting a foreign place - the Vincent Van Gogh museum was a stand out visit for us. Overall the history behind the mad man who was Van Gogh is very intriguing - the story of how he came into a state of frenzied art and eventually lost his mind but regained mental strength to push back into his beautiful pieces before the end of his life. This message is portrayed on the bottom levels of the Van Gogh museum as you gather history about his life as an early painter and an explorer of art school, learning color and art skills (see the image above). A little tip about visiting the Van Gogh - we wait in line for about 30 mins before getting up to the ticket window. You have two options for purchasing tickets - one line was for people who had bought them online and the other was for walk up ticket sales. Honestly, the wait for our line was just about as long as pre paying for tickets but if you like to be prepared you can grab tickets at this link below:
This experience was a little pricey but lets be honest here - your paying to view the largest collection of Van Gogh paints IN THE WORLD. Two adult tickets will set you back about €34 we might have gone over our daily budget that day because of splurging to see this art collection - but it was well worth it.
The Van Gogh museum is built in chronological order of his life story - the bottom levels teaches you about his upbringing, friends and family then level two is where more and more artwork comes into play as he began to create and create on an unstoppable level. As you reach level three inside the Van Gogh museum you begin to search thru some of his most famous pieces and onto level four where his most recent work (by recent we mean 1888-90) is presented along with the art he recreate before taking his own life at the young age of 37. We were under the impression that level four would host famous pieces like: Starry Nights - but instead had just as iconic work but to see these master craft pieces with your own eyes is breath taking. If you've ever studied art or art history than the Vincent Van Gogh is a must-visit while your in Amsterdam.
“Great things are done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together”
Thanks for reading as we catch up with all our excursions from Amsterdam and Haarlem - more content coming soon about: the taste of Netherlands and Life on the Road - Culture shockers.
What's that? YES now all the posts are geo-tagged with the museum location as well so if you need an address check out our geo tags.