Coffee Shops, and Art Museums

On our last full day in Amsterdam, we decided to start the morning with a hot chocolate from a coffee shop.  Let's face it you can't go to Amsterdam and not at least experience the "coffee shop." We enjoyed a normal hot chocolate because not everything in the coffee shop has pot in it. 

It was an interesting experience. I would have been bummed if we left Amsterdam and didn't experience a "coffee shop people watch." 

In the afternoon we went to a really neat museum called the Stedlijk museum. It is the modern art museum. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. 

One of the most memorable exhibits for me was one called The Kiss. You enter a very dark room, where you can literally not see in front of your face because it's so dark. As my eyes began to adjust I realized there were hologram type things in the middle of the room acting out (very slowly) the words that were being projected from the speakers. As I inched my way closer into the room, my eyes continued to adjust. It was hard to tell how many holograms there were in the room. Since they were moving so slow it was hard to make out who was watching and who was a hologram in the exhibit. At one point someone, or a hologram, started walking quickly towards me and I wasn't sure if it was a bystander or a hologram so I turned around and ran out of the room into the light, just to find out it was someone who was also checking out the exhibit. Although I was embarrassed I was intrigued to figure out how they were doing the holograms, so I went back in. This time I got about 1 1/2 feet away from the holograms and began to watch them move. They seemed to be naked and rolling (very slowly) on the ground on top of one another. I began to look around the room to try and locate the projector but couldn't find one. Just then the holograms began to very slowly stand up, and CCRRRAAAK! the female holograms leg popped as she stood up. "HOLY CRAP THEY ARE REAL! THEY ARE REAL FREAKING PEOPLE," as it hit me I realized just how close I was standing to the naked PEOPLE! I quickly, very quickly exited the room while my face was blushing red. It was like nothing I have ever seen before. 

The next really neat exhibit was to one by Ed Adkins. This was one of those exhibits that you could sit and watch all day yet you don't really know why because it's a little messed up. 

This was a series of videos of an avatar who talked about things like love, sex, and death. Most of the time you didn't really understand whats going on until the very last few seconds. We really enjoyed this exhibit, because again it was like nothing we had ever seen. 

We had a nice lunch at a cute cafe that was right outside of the flower market. As we were eating we did a lot of people watching. There were so many plants, bulbs, and flowers at the market. They were so pretty. What was really interesting was the fact that they sold cannabis plants there as well. In Amsterdam each household can have 5 plants of their own as long as they are grown in sunlight. Crazy! 

We took an afternoon train to the airport to check in to our final hotel. We enjoyed  an evening and morning of relaxing before heading home.