Amsterdam

Amsterdam was a blur.  And I mean that in the best possible way.  With less than 48 hours to see a city as incredible as Amsterdam, it was and will be the quickest trip I take to another city during my time here in London.  As such, and as the city that Amsterdam is infamous for being, the only way to experience it was to experience it frenziedly.  Luckily, I had three other reckless adventurers by my side to see what kind of trouble we could manage to get into.

We began the morning by cruising through the city's famous canals, mapless and with a hope that if we ambulated around through them long enough, we'd eventually find ourselves somewhere.  Beginning at the main Amsterdam Centraal railway station -- an incredible bit of architecture in its own right -- and heading south toward the rest of the city, I gained a real appreciation for Amsterdam's city planning.  Built in the 17th century during Amsterdam's Golden Age, there are four major canals shaped like a crescent moon that stretch out from the Centraal station area.  I admit that it took one very nice Dutch man taking pity on our lost souls to explain this to us before I fully understood the logic of it all, but before we knew it, we did find ourselves somewhere: right smack in the middle of De Wallen, better known to the rest of us as "The Red Light District."  Enough said on that matter.

La Moisson (The Harvest), 1888

Being pressed for time, the single request I had was to visit the Van Gogh Museum, and I am so pleased we did.  What an absolutely incredible collection it maintains!  The permanent collection contains one of my personal van Gogh favorites, The Harvest.  He painted this landscape during his time in Arles in the summer of 1888, a period during which he was working far more frenziedly than four travelers with only 48 hours in Amsterdam: in little more than a week painting furiously under the scorching June sun, van Gogh had completed upwards of ten paintings and five drawings on his most recent subject matter and newest obsession, wheatfields and the harvest.  Standing before it was a truly transformative experience for me; it is as if the viewer is transported to those fields in that tiny town in the south of France more than a century ago.  The heat of that day and the simplicity of the life being lived out there are tangible.  I have a painting by my very dear family friend and a local artist, Tony Jankowski, hanging above my bed that depicts a scene very similar to The Harvest.  There is something about the rawness of this subject that I find intriguing and humbling.  It would be a nice way to live out one's days in a place where one wakes with the sun and spends time listening to the wind rustling through the wheatfields.  For now, enjoying such a life through a painting done by one of the world's most renowned artists in a city like Amsterdam will certainly do.

Centre Pompidou

Before leaving for Paris, I made sure to consult with the most well-traveled person I know for his opinion on the "must sees," knowing that I'd receive something unique, memorable, and -- based on his passion for and knowledge of contemporary art -- likely a museum of contemporary art.  His response: Le Centre Pompidou. 

The facade of the Centre Pompidou.  Italian architect Renzo Piano and British designer Richard Rogers created a building that harnesses the spirit of the 1960's by bringing typical interior design features -- like its signature escalator climbing up the face of the museum entrance -- and bringing them outside, freeing up the inside space for art installation, exhibition, and library uses.  Visitors revel in the museum's presence, jarring in comparison to the typically French buildings that surround it, in the main Piazza, beckoning them from the city to explore the art within.

Munch's self-portrait.

We were very lucky to have visited the Centre Pompidou while an exhibition of Edvard Munch's work was on display.  Munch was a Norwegain painter and avid photographer who had come to Paris during the 1889 World's Fair, the year in which the Eiffel Tour was completed, where he was heavily influenced by the artists Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Showcasing almost 140 of Munch's work, including around sixty paintings and fifty photographs, and arranged thematically across twelve rooms, the exhibit revealed the artist's tormented life and near-obsession with returning to the same motifs in his artwork.  The exhibitor explained: "A stranger to any Romantic conception of the uniqueness of the work of art, Munch was doubtless the one, of all the artists of his generation, who posed with the greatest acuity one of the great questions of 20th-century art, that of the reproducibility of the work of art."

By revisiting the same subjects, oftentimes repainting the exact same pieces, it was a kind of catharsis for Munch.  "Through repetition, often reduced to its most simple expression, the motif becomes autonomous; it ends up existing for itself, functioning as a kind of trademark or artist's signature."

Centre Pompidou was as promised: a contemporary art museum, unique, and very memorable.  The rooftop has one of the most exquisite views of the city and, although I cannot claim the recommendation as my own, it should be a "must see" on anyone's Paris list.  Amusez-vous bien!

Inside the Centre Pompidou's famous elevator to the top floor

Le Cafe

Paris is celebrated for its cafes, and Parisians are renowned for their fondness for cafe-sitting.  Accordingly, our first stop was Cafe de Flore, a lovely establishment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain made famous by such artists and intellectuals as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Pablo Picasso, those who made Ernest Hemingway's Paris truly A Moveable Feast.

Directly across the boulevard is Brasserie Lipp, a favorite of these same thinkers and recently commemorated as such by Woody Allen in his 2011 rendition of Hemingway's Paris, Midnight in Paris (a film which, unabashedly, I have seen five times now).












Enjoying a bottle of Bourgogne, watching the Parisian world go by, and dreaming of that bygone era when the City of Lights was bursting at its artistic and intellectual seams was, as they say, tres chic.

Autumn in Paris

They say a picture is worth a thousand words...Paris kinda speaks for itself.

Notre Dame

Eiffel Tower at dusk with all the twinkling lights

The Seine.  We lucked out on our last day in Paris with really fantastic, sunny weather.