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Showing posts with label Indonesian food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indonesian food. Show all posts

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Viewing Malevich's Paintings and Eating Indonesian Food in Amsterdam (Netherlands) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget




Viewing Malevich's Paintings and Eating Indonesian Food in Amsterdam (Netherlands) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Of course, the next day was my vacation day as well, so I was out the hotel door at 8 am to explore Amsterdam (Netherlands).

I visited the historical part of downtown by the Royal Palace and a little area called the Beguinage – the site of a former church of reformed Presbyterians called the Beguines.

From there, I walked from one end to the other of the main canals – the Singel, the Herengracht, and the Keizersgracht.  I made a few stops to buy coffee with cream.  Walking along canals to admire architecture is cold yet informative tourism for learning about architecture that is not usually introduced in university art history courses.

I walked along the Leiderstraat and found myself on Museumplein again.  I visited the Municipal Museum and enjoyed Malevich’s paintings such as “White Square on White.”  He reminded me of another Dutch painter named Mondrian, who did “security systems” paintings I thought for office decoration.

I went back on Leidestraat and found an Indonesian Restaurant.  I was going to see the Rembrandt collection at the Rijksmuseum, but my innocent sounding Rijstafel (Rice Table Lunch) took three hours to consume. 

Indonesian food is so spicy that you have to wipe away tears away as you eat it.  I loved every morsel, but I had to drink a lot of water to deal with the heat.  I planned to buy an Indonesian cookbook and learn to make this delicious food, but tone down the spices a bit.

After the dragon-hot meal, I just enjoyed walking around Amsterdam and buying coffee with cream and looking at stores and apartments.  I knew everyone at work would laugh at my wild weekend in Amsterdam with its liberal drug and prostitution laws.

The next day I wrote down some Amsterdam notes before returning to Paris:

-Windows – Building windows are so clean in Amsterdam that they glisten in the sun.  Glistening windows make brown brick buildings with red geraniums look very upscale no matter what kind of neighborhood they are in.

-Pulleys are located on rooftops of buildings to make moving furniture in and out of apartments easy.

-Amsterdam has great urban planning.  The city has a lot of trains, canals, and bikes for moving people and goods around quickly.

-I think the Netherlands is the largest market for bicycles outside the Peoples’ Republic of China.

-Fashion from the 1960s prevailed in Amsterdam in the 1990s.  (Blue jeans, T-shirts, and tennis shoes.)

-Amsterdam has many good bookstores including English ones.  The City of International Trade requires many multilingual lawyers, bankers, accountants, and salesmen.

If you plan to visit Amsterdam and visit its art museums, I would recommend reading Simon Schama’s  The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age and Rembrandt’s Eyes.  People of English descent should read about our ancestral trading and naval rivals.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books




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