Amsterdam, Holland

On the 21^st, we watched the film The Taming of the Shrew in both classes. It was interested to watch this film after seeing Kiss Me Kate, which, like I said, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. The film starred famous actress Elizabeth Taylor as Kate, the shrew, which I thought was funny because her husband was one of the co-directors and actors in the film. Biased? Perhaps. But she did do a great performance as the shrew.

After lunch and class, a group of us headed to Holland for the weekend! We took a bus to a train, to another train, to the ferry, to another train… Quite the journey! The ferry was nice because we departed around 9 PM and arrived early at 7 AM, so we slept in our cabins on the ferry. When we got to Amsterdam Friday morning, we got some lunch, looked around in the flower markets on the sides of the streets, and then went straight to Anne Frank’s house. I couldn’t believe I actually touched that famous bookcase that covered the secret door to the Frank and friends’ annex. The rooms had nothing in them, and were not allowed to be inhabited by anyone after Otto Frank made the house a historic place in the late 60’s. He did so to visually express the vacancy that the Holocaust left behind, one that cannot be mended. Later, we went out to dinner at an Argentinian grill.

On Saturday, we began our day by heading straight to the Van Gogh Museum. We stayed there for over 2 hours. I really enjoyed this museum because his work actually does interest me. I remember learning about Van Gogh’s late life in Art History my freshman year of college. Van Gogh began to “see red” and had absurd thoughts about death. His work would gradually begin to reflect that (Think, “Scream” and “Starry Night”). The museum also displayed various other artists’ work that had influenced Van Gogh in some way. I enjoyed the lithography because I did that in my honors art class in high school, and it was by far the most difficult thing to do! We ended up going to a few more museums, then ended the evening with a canal cruise through Amsterdam. Lovely weekend!