Van Loon

The transition to autumn in Amsterdam continues, and it is starting to feel more like winter than summer. The rains started falling on Thursday evening, and they took only a few short breaks through Sunday evening. The outside temperature is below 50 degrees, the heat has come on in my apartment, and my beer (Rogue, Sam Adams, Marble, etc.) shirts are now undershirts for warmer clothing.

With the daylight shrinking - both due to cloud cover and the sun rising later and setting earlier - I've decided to purchase another museum card, which allows free entry to most "real" museums in the Netherlands for a year (so, not including things like the Torture Museum, the Canabis Museum, and the various sex museums). I have a vague goal of visiting all of the museums in Amsterdam that are covered by the card in the next year, with many of those visits occurring during the dark holiday hours.

Today's trip was to the Van Loon Museum, which is described as follows on their website:

In the heart of the Amsterdam canal district lies Museum Van Loon, a magnificent private residence built in 1672 by the architect Adriaen Dortsman. The first resident was painter Ferdinand Bol, a pupil of Rembrandt. The interior of the house has remained largely intact during the last centuries and still evokes the splendor of the Golden Age. 

In the rooms, a large collection of paintings, fine furniture, precious silvery and porcelain from different centuries is on display. Behind the house is a beautiful garden, an oasis of quiet in the modern inner city. The garden is laid out in formal style, and is bordered on the far side by the classical façade of the coach house. This original unity of canal house, garden and coach house is nowhere else to be seen. If you want a glimpse of the world behind the façades of the world famous canals, a visit to Museum Van Loon is definitely worth your while.

I think these pictures were on loan from the photography museum. And that might be Juliette Lewis. Regardless, they're creepy.

I took several of these when I was confident no one was looking.

It was especially notable for having more Dutch visitors than foreign visitors, with several Dutch families and elderly couples. I am guessing that a lot of these smaller museums (so, ones apart from the Rijks and Van Gogh) will tend to have fewer foreigners. This is not a bad thing.

Something a little more modern