Vacation and quality time

This year my birthday fell just around my vacation and as usual I had no intentions of travelling anywhere - I have travelled enough for one lifetime and have absolutely no intentions of spending time in a crowded airports, stations or anything that involves crowds. My perfect idea of vacation & rest is being off work but still here in the middle of busy city, with enough interesting things to do if I want to. 

One of the first places I visited was Museum Van Loon, a beautiful canal house that belongs to this family and open to the public - apparently it was some important family with properties in various places and they would spend a social season here, while living elsewhere. Its a very beautiful and quite glamorous building, but I wasn't interested in their wealth - what interested me the most was the living arrangements, how the servants had their space in the basement, etc. There is a quite spectacular garden and a coach house at the back, very quiet and serene place with atmosphere of a farm far away, completely silent and unlike being in centre of the city.

Another canal house was Willet-Holthuysen Museum situated at the end of Herengracht canal (and a walking distance from me) - I used to admire the garden and this was the first time ever to actually step inside. Completely different in personality, this one belonged to a couple where the bride Louisa Holthuysen was the one with the wealth and her husband Abraham Willet was a bohemian art collector. The couple was childless and left the property to the city, with request that museum bear both of their names. Unfortunately it seems that original furniture was sold out long ago by the early curators so what we see today is mainly reconstructed but the art and books collection is original. Again, there was a beautiful garden and a very touching collection of paintings of couple's pets. 

By far the most interesting visit was something I wanted to do for the longest time: again, the walking distance from me is a private collection called The Six Collection. This is a old and influential family that goes back for some 12 generations and mainly they are all called Six (with lots of sons called Jan Six) - originally from France, they moved to Amsterdam in 17th century and were always socialising with the most prominent citizens from the history. Trough marriages, family amassed a huge private art collection that is now on display but reservations must be made online - it was fairly easy and not complicated at all, the tour was conducted by a young student whom I left a nice tip - amongst other things on display, there were very interesting portraits of wealthy young brides wearing black dresses (black being expensive colour), ubiquitous portraits of dead children, a portrait that takes the whole wall of a room specially build to accommodate it and the best of all, a genuine Rembrandt portrait of one of the many men called Jan Six - this particular one was a mayor of Amsterdam and the painting was a gift from the artist, therefore his own vision and probably close to what he genuinely enjoyed (as opposite to ordered pieces). A famous painting "The Milkmaid" by Johannes Vermeer was also once here, but she was sold to Rijksmuseum and is now one of the most celebrated pieces there. 

I have also for the first time visited Artis Zoo that for the longest time I avoided, thinking that I probably won't enjoy seeing caged animals. Well, during one of my recent long walks I spotted a nice park across the canal and a giraffe in there - who was apparently perfectly fine in the open air - so I changed my mind and wanted to see it. It turned out a beautiful park with a lot of things to see, including insects, butterflies, lizards, lions, sea lions, elephants, giraffes, wolves, jaguar, zebra, monkeys, crocodiles, vultures, owls, etc. All the animals seem quite comfortable there and the space is relatively large, in fact the park is so big that afterwards I had to rest and take a nap - and still we have not seen absolutely everything. Seems like a place to visit several times to explore carefully all the details. 

Another landmark of the city is The Rembrandt House Museum that now I had visited for the very first time (it looks as this time I really took time to see all that I ignored previously). Contrary to what i expected, it was crowded but not too busy and the organisation was excellent - visitors were guided in direction that allowed them to explore perfectly reconstructed 17th century house. Bizarrely, we know into a smallest detail what was exactly in the house because all his properties were carefully listed and written down when Rembrandt became bankrupt and house was sold - thanks to these documents we are now able to completely reconstruct the interiors . It was very interesting, however, the thing that impressed me the most was a special kind of glass that allowed visitors to peek in the back side of the building but only on one side - if you look to the left (in private houses nearby) you can't see anything. So you can clearly see trough the window on the right, but the glass protects the view on the left. I have never seen such a thing and could not wrap my head around it.