I wanted to get to the Rijksmuseum early (opened at 9am) so we visited our local McDonalds again for a quick bite before walking to the museum district. There wasn’t a lot open this early on a Sunday, only McDonald’s and Starbucks.

We walked the 2km (maybe a bit more) to the Rijksmuseum, spotting Adele on the way! (At Madame Tussauds)

This supermarket was closed – but they certainly have a different product range than Camperdown Woolies…

We presented our Holland Pass for entry, checked our jackets in the cloakroom and enjoyed the morning at the museum. We saw many great works by artists including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh and Bol.

The collection includes over 1 million items with about 8000 on display in the amazing building that is the Rijksmuseum.

Highlights included Rembrandt’s The Night Watch – amazed by the colossal size of it (379.5cm x 453.5cm, weighing over 300kg), as well as The Battle of Waterloo, another monster artwork (567cm x 823cm).

It was now getting close to lunch time, so we decided to find a Tours and Tickets outlet to redeem our Holland Pass for a Heineken Experience ticket. The earliest timeslot available was 2.30pm, so we decided to participate in one of my favourite activities when visiting foreign countries –  visiting the supermarket! I love to see the different products that they have and navigating my way through it all. We purchased a few items to enjoy for lunch including mini pizza and cheese and onion bread from the instore bakery. We found a park bench near a city roundabout to eat our purchases and bide our time until our Heineken timeslot. It is fascinating to see the different modes of transport in use in Amsterdam, with the ubiquitous bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, together with cars, motorcycles, scooters, buses, trams and little smart cars (and that’s just the land vehicles). The dedicated bicycle lanes work so well and traffic flows pretty well.

We presented at the Heineken Brewery just prior to our timeslot. It was good, but having been to similar tours at Cascade and Boags (and not actually a beer drinker) I found it to be more of the same for the first part. The second part of the tour was a bit more interactive which was fun. The tour includes tokens for two free beers, as well as a sampler part way through the tour. I drank about half of each. So Ulick had a few beers.

We then strolled back towards the hotel, stopping at another supermarket to grab some items for dinner and of course some chocolate.

We had a quiet night in. I started listening to Dr Karl’s Random Road Trip Through Science on BorrowBox, but fell asleep. Waking a bit later to eat dinner and go back to sleep. This, I guess, is jetlag.

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