We were up and out the door at 10:00. We first went to a pancake house on one of the canals (don’t remember the name) and had bacon and cheese pancakes. The pancakes are more like crepes. Really yummy. Afterwards we went to the Rijksmuseum. It was smaller than we thought – when you look outside it looks like a sprawling 16th Century castle. Inside it’s just 2 floors with 4 or 5 small galleries on each floor. The St. Louis Art Museum is bigger. However, what it made up for in little space was an incredible collection including original Rembrandts that took up a whole wall and the colors so bright and bold they were lifelike. Our favorite was De stallmeesters (The syndics of the drapers’ guild).
After the museum we went back to Albert Heijn to find Adam painkillers as he had a horrible headache. Apparently you have to go to a pharmacy to get painkillers. We also got some laundry detergent, and had to ask a fellow shopper if what we were getting was laundry detergent and not bleach as our grasp of Dutch is non-existent, LOL!
We next went to the Diamonte Museum and the Coster Diamond Factory and got to learn how diamonds are fashioned. Later on we found an “apotheek” (pharmacy) where of course we spent a half hour marveling what we can get over the counter verses prescription compared to the States.
In our wonderings we somehow found a whole row of antique stores, and eventually made it to an Indonesian Restaurant. We had never had Indonesian food. Apparently it’s a bunch of small dishes that you dish into a bowl with rice. When I say a bunch, we counted no less than 17. It was yummy. Some of it was incredibly spicy (I think my lips went numb for a while) and some was just flavorful. We had beef chicken pork, tofu, veggies, peppers, etc.
Made it an early night and came back to the room by 7:00. We did laundry, packed and drank wine and ate the last of the aged gouda. Nighty Night.