Amsterdam Vacation - History pieces

I had the pleasure of taking a vacation with my lovely wife and family this summer that included Amsterdam and Norway.  While our selections in Norway were limited by the ports of call of our cruise, we had free rein in Amsterdam to do as we choose.  Being who we are, our choices of stops were fairly historical in focus (duh!).

In Amsterdam in no particular order, we were able to visit:

Rijksmuseum

Probably the best known museum in Amsterdam, and one of our highest priorities to visit, we probably could have spent a week here and not seen everything we wanted to.  Museums with children are always challenging, luckily big kid is getting old enough to entertain little kid while mom & dad do their thing.  The biggest draw, of course, are the Night Watch and other Rembrandt paintings.  The Rijksmuseum is fairly good about having their collection available digitally, but the things you just don't get from the online presence is the sheer scale and vibrancy of these works of art.  They are massive, and so, so beautiful in person.

Hermitage Amsterdam

This museum is a branch of the famous Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.  I honestly didn't even know it existed until we were already planning to go here and were looking for things to do.  Then we found out they had a Dutch Golden Age exhibit running in coordination with the Rijksmusem and the Amsterdam Museum, and it quickly came to the top of the list.  They had a huge collection of civic guard portraits in this exhibit, and the presentation was awe inspiring (I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor when I walked into the big room).

Museum of Bags & Purses

A personal interest for both me and my wife, this was pretty high on our list and we didn't figure it would take too long.  It's not a huge museum, and all of the pre-1700 items were on a single floor, but they do have a nice little collection with several sweet purses, a bead purse, and a lovely leather purse that I've seen before (it's WAY bigger than it looks):

Museum Van Loon

This is the house of one of the founders of the Dutch East-India Company.  Again, a small museum, but unique in that it consists of the house, the garden, and a coach house still together.  While the house itself is later than our period of interest, the Van Loon family is not.  There are several portraits and a few artifacts for anyone researching the later 16th/early 17th century times.

Rembrandt House Museum

This was one from the wife's list of priorities, and I'll admit I wasn't that interested until I got there.  With it being the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's passing, this museum like others in the city were well stocked.  This was probably the busiest museum we went to as we managed to hit it right as a school group was leaving, we think.  There is evidence that some of the furnishings in the historical portion of the house are actually from other museums in the city, like the Rijksmuseum; it's nice to see that partnership and sharing among the local museums again.

Oude Kerk

It's hard not to end up in at least one historical church while in Amsterdam, and this was our choice while we were there.  Translating to Old Church, it truly is, originally built in the 12th century, there are various additions throughout the centuries.  The entire floor of the church, practically, is full of graves with some very interesting grave stones if you're into that kind of thing, but the painted ceilings were especially nice to see.  They also have a few artifacts on display from varying time periods.


We also managed to visit a couple extra gift stores: those in the National Maritime Museum and the Niewe Kerk (New Church - new is relative, being consecrated in the 15th century).  If I had to do it over again, I would have liked to find time to do a full visit to the Maritime Museum, as they apparently have a very nice collection of historical maps.

All in all, a wonderful vacation filled with a ton of history.  Pictures are spread across at least 3 devices (2 phones and a digital camera) so haven't fully been gone through yet, but I'm hoping for some gems in there.