Amsterdam Again

We were Saturday and Sunday in Brugge and thought we would do Antwerp next. But then we cleverly noticed that Antwerp's museums were closed on Monday. So we decided to make Monday a travel day, to Amsterdam, to pick up some items left in storage there, meet new friends, and see the Van Gogh museum.  The travel went smoothly, barely moving actually, in humongous traffic jams around Antwerp, but we got to Amsterdam in good order and found Camping Gaasper, by far the best camping arrangement we have seen for Amsterdam. The city is a straight shot in on the Metro: the station is a few hundred meters from the campground, then one change where you merely cross to the other side of the platform where the second train is waiting for you. Twenty minutes, tops, and you are at Amsterdam's central station.

Students of this blog know that we have been to Amsterdam a number of times, most recently in 2011 and 2012, when we stored the Grey Wanderer there. It is another city of great art and distinctive architecture, and we mostly enjoy just walking around, taking in the canal culture, the fries, the beer, the buildings, the interesting shops and weird people, etc. Perhaps it's my advancing age, but Amsterdam seems to be getting tamer. Drugs and prostitution and general lewdness were far less in evidence this visit. Perhaps it's everyone's advancing age. Perhaps we just go to bed earlier now. Perhaps it was just late May and the swarms, throngs, and hordes of American college students had not yet arrived. Anyhow, here is a miscellany from just walking around Amsterdam.

Amsterdam central station

Famous building

Drug store

Red lights

Bicycle parking garage near the central station

Canal scene

Ditto

Bicycle crash scene; they got up, dusted themselves off,
said sorry, and were back on their respective ways

Another canal scene

Line to get into the Ann Frank House

Street scene, another part of the city (out by the
Museumsplein)

Art Nouveau police station of yore

At the very forgettable flower market

A very rare sight: two American campers, MT and SD license
plates...turned many heads in the campground; most
Europeans have never seen an American camping car, one
from the US; when I sense someone has a sense of humor
and command of English, I tell them we took the Transatlantic
Tunnel (five days, lousy scenery), or that Montana is a small
principality tucked in between Spain and Andorra ("and this
is my wife, Queen Vicki")

Larry and Joyce, embarking on their European motorhome
odyssey; bon voyage!

Brugge Art

Followers of this blog know that we have a special interest in and affection for the art of the later Medieval and Renaissance North. Where we are now, in the so-called Low Countries, is where it began. Much of that art was dispersed to the invading Spanish and Hapsburg armies and courts and cities over the centuries. And indeed we have seen it all over Europe. All over. Everywhere. (Ask me about Bosch and the Prado). It was Jan van Eyck, in the early 1400s, who began mixing pigment with oil and who achieved clarity, detail, color, richness, and more that the world had never seen in painting. It was nearly a century, well after the high Renaissance was over there, before oil painting became the practice in Italy. Van Eyck's successors, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, Provost, Bosch, the Breughels, Durer, and others carried the tradition further, and much of their work is still here. That's mostly why we came to Brugge. We'll see the crowning masterpiece of the early northern era, van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, when we visit Ghent in a week.

Brugge's museums have their act together in many ways, not
least this delivery truck, itself worthy of study

Our first stop was the Hospital of St. Jan; for reasonably
healthy atheists, we seem to spend a lot of time in churches
and hospitals; oh well, this is a treasure chest, decorated
by Memling, the sufferings and martyrdom of St. Ursula
(and the 11,000 virgins who accompanied her)

Virgin and Child, by an anonymous 14th century master; not
a master of anatomy, however

Upper floor of the main hall of the hospital, with vaulting
exposed

Memling's great altarpiece of the two Johns (baptist and
evangelist), done for the Hospital

Anything concerning any of the
evangelist Johns--scholars argue there were
at least three hands behind the works
attributed to him by the early Church--
is worthy of further examination; here he is,
receiving the Revelation

Seven-headed aerial combat, just as we saw in Angers

Devotional diptych of Mother and Child and Maartin van
Nieuwenhoven, by Memling 

Up closer, with this very early mirror shot; the first, of course,
was a van Eyck, and generation before; mirror shots would 
become quite the thing in Flemish painting (and Spanish) in 
a couple more centuries...

Another Memling triptych, that of (commissioned by) Adriaan
Reins

And now we move to the Groeningmuseum; a Last Judgment
by Jan Provost

Who apparently was taking lessons from Bosch

Speaking of whom, here is a Bosch Last Judgment; just like
in the Prado, the Bosch here draws crowds, and people like
us can spend very long periods of time looking at them

Since any few square inches of these works
yield interesting insights...about what, we
are not sure...the late Medieval mind, the mind
of Hieronymus Bosch, trouble brewing in the
religious world of the time...still one cannot
help being impressed, even awed

Memling's Moreel triptych (the donor)

Rogier van der Weyden's "St. Luke Drawing
the Madonna"--we conjecture St. Luke is the
patron saint of artists (?)

And here, for the skeptical, is Lancelot
Blondeel's "St. Luke Painting the Madonna"

And perhaps this museum's most famous piece, van Eyck's
Madonna with Canon Joris van der Paele (again, the donor);
the lighting was terrible; this is a large, almost life-sized
painting; the color and detail are breath-taking

Brugge

We drove on, reluctantly leaving France, to Brugge, a town we had visited in 1979, but of which we had no memories, save our hosts. We found our campground, Klein Strand in Jabbeke, a few miles outside Brugge, and next morning, despite considerable confusion, bused in to the old city. Our goals were to see some of the great art and the city and its mostly 17th century architecture. We are in Flemland now, as some call it, Belgium, a place of exceptional interest and beauty. And great beers. And lace and chocolate and waffles. And, above all, great frites.

No sooner than we walk to the bus stop in
Jabbeke where we camped than up pops
another bread vending machine; this time
imaginatively called a "MannaMatic"

Photo selection is so difficult; we'll skip
Brugge's forgettable cathedral in order to
show this sleek, stainless-steel public
pissoir, very nearly affixed to the cathedral
wall; of course I did

Street scene

Ditto

Interesting iron-work

Apse of cathedral; or some other apse

On the main drag en route to the bell tower
and main square

About a quarter of the "beer wall," featuring all of Belgium's
thousand or so beers; they really are the best; Duvel best of
them all

Peeking into the Dali museum; every big city seems to have
one

On the main square; not Brussels' Grande Place; but pretty
impressive

Indulging in the frites experience; this was the
petit serving, dinner for both of us; reminded
me of the old saw about how to tell Belgians
from French: the French have fries with their
bread; Belgians have bread with their fries

Artsy-fartsy shot of the day: the customary
bronze model and the real thing,  Brugge's
bell tower

More central square

On an adjoining square, just past the Kathe Wolhlfhart
shoppe; warning: Brugge is just a bit touristy

But that's forgivable when there are block after block after
block of these mostly 17th century beauties

Vimy Ridge, 2013

We had visited a number of WWI sites and memorials on previous trips to France and Belgium. They are like Gettysburg, writ large. Very large. Unlike WWII, it was a war, perhaps the last great war, between armies, men in uniform. There were battles in WWI, I have read (Mons?), in which the British lost more men in uniform than they did in the whole of WWII. In the Second World War, most casualties were among non-combatants.

After a score or so of WWI cemeteries we decided to stop again at one of the many memorials. The Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge is relatively unique in that the battlefield has been left as it was, or now is. There is an excellent visitor center and some hundreds of meters of trench and "subway" are open to tour. Electrified fences keep visitors on approved trails. There are un-detonated explosives all over the grounds, some still viable just a few years ago. Much of the warfare here was subterranean. An explosives specialist was killed in 1998, not by a detonation, but by the collapse of a tunnel.

En route, one of the many memorials that dot
the countryside

Looking to what was left of the village of Vimy, 1916

Very able Canadian college students conduct tours; there
are displays and a superb video at the visitor center

A British mortar

Out in the trenches now, standing at a Canadian look-out
post

What the Canadian look-out posts looked like from the German
side

Trench-work on the German side; note their stone-work
observation post

The forest has come back mostly, but there are artillery
craters everywhere, some building-size; it was an artillery
war

Me in the German observation post; just happy to be
able to fit in

Much of France is so dedicated

Steps down to the "subway," the improved
subterranean route, sometimes going for
kilometers, for communication and supply

NB

At the Memorial itself, on which ground thousands of
Canadians died; they took Vimy Ridge, 3,000 killed, 7,000
wounded; among many Canadian triumphs in WWI

The great Vimy Ridge Memorial