Culture Vulture

Dear O'H dear & Lovely Tea Jenny,

We went to the Van Gogh museum today. This pretty much confirms the embarrassing fact that my appreciation for paintings is somewhat limited. I listened to the woman on the audio and had several moments of “Really?” during the “perhaps he was thinking of” or “maybe this actually another self-portrait*” chat. The guy has been dead for over 100 years so no one actually knows.

We wandered back through the tunnel in the centre of the Rijksmuseum and this girl was just standing there singing opera songs. You wouldn’t have looked twice at her if she’d walked past but she had the most AMAZING voice which was amplified by the cloisters. I actually felt myself welling up. It was my favourite part of my trip to the Van Gogh museum!

We had a lovely hour standing on one of the bridges, watching the boats on the canal and judging how much fun they were having. Some of them ended up with little backstories - “Definitely a stag party. They arrived last night and got absolutely hammered. Rob is still missing - last seen heading for the red light district” and “Mum & Dad were completely wasted last night so the kids nicked the boat out for a day trip**.”

We went for Indonesian food in Sama Sebo which was lovely. Once again, The Youngest Mini Princess declined to hang out with us after dinner (because Love Island, the unseen bits) but The Eldest Mini Princess thinks her parents chat is DIAMOND and we had a great wee night, sitting outside a bar talking nonsense. I love that she enjoys our company enough to do that. No, it IS our chat. Nothing to do with the free booze!

C

*at the smoking skeleton painting

**One of the boats was being driven by a kid who looked about 8 with his siblings.