Up VERY early this morning to blog. The scene outside our door was placid, but later in the morning it would start to rain.
We reluctantly bid farewell to Edam and the Hotel de Fortuna, and set out on a rainy drive through Amsterdam and to the south.
Our first destination today was the Mueller-Kroeller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands. Otterlo is a very small town pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and the museum is outside of town in a national forest.
The national forest was once the estate of the Kroeller-Muellers, who were Rotterdam blast furnace barons (I kid you not) at the start of the 20th century. They built an enormous hunting lodge in the woods, began an extensive art collection, and commissioned the design and construction of a large museum. The 1929 crash stopped all that, but eventually they were able to open the museum and later gave the land, buildings, and art to the Dutch government. The museum has been renovated and expanded several times, and includes a vast sculpture garden in the forest. The collection includes lots of Van Gogh and a sprinkling of other impressionists including Seurat, Monet, Pissaro, etc.
There is also a collection of large scale recent creations, including one with a bunch of little mirrors and one with two huge canvases painted grey.
For the most part we were unfamilar with the artists responsible for the recent work, or at least I was. The sculpture garden included pieces by Serra, Rodin, and Oldenburg, but again I was unfamiliar with most of the artists. There were a lot of sculpture pieces we liked, though.
After spending a few hours at the museum, we set out on the road again. It has become a tradition for us to take twice as long as expected to travel on the weekends due to rain and construction -- today we kept the tradition alive. There's something about Europe. You can drive along on the only major highway in the area and suddenly the entire thing is closed. Then you spend an hour or more winding through the main streets of small towns, until eventually you rejoin the highway. It's the equivalent of driving on I-4o5 and suddenly being diverted into side streets in El Segundo and Redondo beach for an hour or two, with no warning.
Anyway, we arrived (late) at our final destination for the day at about 7:00 pm. We're staying tonight in the Lime Tree B&B in Epen, Netherlands. Epen is at the far southern tip of the country, at a point where the Netherlands is so narrow that you can easily walk to Belgium in one direction and to Germany in the other. We're thinking about walking to Belgium before breakfast.
We were greeted on arrival with coffee and fresh pastry.
Then we walked on the path to town through corn fields where the corn is as high as a you-know-what's eye, and where there are the inevitable cows.
We had dinner at a place where locals dominate. In fact, although there are several hotels in town it seems like a place where the Dutch take their vacations. No other foreigners (besides us) in evidence. The restaurant was called "De Smidse" (the Blacksmith), and hotel rooms and apartments were also on offer. The food was great, the price was right, and if we ever swing through Epen again we'll probably stay at this one star hotel.
As we finished our meal the sun was beginning to set (at 9:30). Here was the view from our table at the restaurant:
It's not a canal view, but it'll do.
We reluctantly bid farewell to Edam and the Hotel de Fortuna, and set out on a rainy drive through Amsterdam and to the south.
Our first destination today was the Mueller-Kroeller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands. Otterlo is a very small town pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and the museum is outside of town in a national forest.
The national forest was once the estate of the Kroeller-Muellers, who were Rotterdam blast furnace barons (I kid you not) at the start of the 20th century. They built an enormous hunting lodge in the woods, began an extensive art collection, and commissioned the design and construction of a large museum. The 1929 crash stopped all that, but eventually they were able to open the museum and later gave the land, buildings, and art to the Dutch government. The museum has been renovated and expanded several times, and includes a vast sculpture garden in the forest. The collection includes lots of Van Gogh and a sprinkling of other impressionists including Seurat, Monet, Pissaro, etc.
There is also a collection of large scale recent creations, including one with a bunch of little mirrors and one with two huge canvases painted grey.
For the most part we were unfamilar with the artists responsible for the recent work, or at least I was. The sculpture garden included pieces by Serra, Rodin, and Oldenburg, but again I was unfamiliar with most of the artists. There were a lot of sculpture pieces we liked, though.
After spending a few hours at the museum, we set out on the road again. It has become a tradition for us to take twice as long as expected to travel on the weekends due to rain and construction -- today we kept the tradition alive. There's something about Europe. You can drive along on the only major highway in the area and suddenly the entire thing is closed. Then you spend an hour or more winding through the main streets of small towns, until eventually you rejoin the highway. It's the equivalent of driving on I-4o5 and suddenly being diverted into side streets in El Segundo and Redondo beach for an hour or two, with no warning.
Anyway, we arrived (late) at our final destination for the day at about 7:00 pm. We're staying tonight in the Lime Tree B&B in Epen, Netherlands. Epen is at the far southern tip of the country, at a point where the Netherlands is so narrow that you can easily walk to Belgium in one direction and to Germany in the other. We're thinking about walking to Belgium before breakfast.
We were greeted on arrival with coffee and fresh pastry.
Then we walked on the path to town through corn fields where the corn is as high as a you-know-what's eye, and where there are the inevitable cows.
We had dinner at a place where locals dominate. In fact, although there are several hotels in town it seems like a place where the Dutch take their vacations. No other foreigners (besides us) in evidence. The restaurant was called "De Smidse" (the Blacksmith), and hotel rooms and apartments were also on offer. The food was great, the price was right, and if we ever swing through Epen again we'll probably stay at this one star hotel.
As we finished our meal the sun was beginning to set (at 9:30). Here was the view from our table at the restaurant:
It's not a canal view, but it'll do.
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