2002 Excerpt from Letter about AMSTERDAM MUSEUMS, Page 1

Amsterdam is loaded with museums, all of which are expensive. The popular ones charge the most and are very crowded. The Anne Frank house had very long lines, and the Van Gogh Museum had a two-hour wait in line on Saturday. We skipped them.

THE RIJKSMUSEUM: The Rijksmuseum charges E8.50 and is worth it. We spent at least 5 hours there. It owns some very famous paintings, among them Rembrandt’s Night Watch, Vermeer’s Kitchen Maid and Woman Reading Letter and Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait. It also has a wonderful collection of paintings by Dutch artists we never heard of, but which, to our uneducated eye, are as wonderful and magical as those painted by the most famous artists. In addition this museum has an enormous collection of decorative arts—Delft porcelain, furniture, tapestries, sculptures among other things. There was a whole room devoted to "treasures"-those costly, ornate and beautifully crafted objects owned by the aristocracy and royalty. There were no Faberge Russian "eggs" in their collection, but they had everything else.

There is also a section on Dutch history. Among other things, it describes the liberation of northern Holland from the Spanish. This campaign of battles was led by the Protestant, William of Orange. Southern Holland remained under Spanish control for long afterwards which explains why it is still largely Catholic. Another highlight was the painting of the betrothal of William III of Orange and Mary Stuart, age 14 and 10, respectively, at the time. There were also portraits of them after they became the rulers of England. It was kind of fun to see them at three different times in their lives. These were the same William and Mary for whom the college in Virginia was named.

One thing that history section did for Adelle is to change her image of the Dutch pretty radically, and once she called this to my attention, it changed my view as well. She always thought of them as straight-laced, peaceful , business oriented types. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Their history is as aggressively bloody as England’s. They acquired many colonies, and they did not do so through quiet meditation or prayer, or much negotiation. They had a large fleet of warships, knew how to sail and fight them and were not diffident about using these to fight with any power that stood in their way.