Sunday May 24, 2026
We had reservations this morning for a guided tour at the Rijksmuseum at 11:45 am. This museum houses paintings by Dutch masters such as Vermeer, Steen, and Rembrandt (there are even a few Van Gogh paintings here). Since we had just visited the Van Gogh museum the day before, I thought we could find the Rijksmuseum with no problem, although I did start the GPS on my phone before we left the hotel. We've been having problems accessing cell service outside the hotel (too long a story to explain) but have found if we start our GPS while we're still connected to the hotel's WiFi service, we can track ourselves on the map. The problem was that somehow, I had the wrong destination entered (and once we were outside the range of the hotel's WiFi, I couldn't change the destination). I didn't realize this until we were 10 minutes into our walk (I thought it was taking us a different way than the way we had gone the day before). By the time we figured out where we were (thank goodness we had brought a paper map with us) and how to get to the museum, we were again running (ok, fast walking) to get to the museum in time for our guided tour. We arrived panting at the museum entrance and barely caught up with the tour group before they left the gathering point. Our guide was a museum employee who was also an art historian. She was able to point out a number of things and/or symbolisms in the paintings we would have otherwise missed. Below are some of the paintings we saw. Rembrandt's famous painting The Night Watch was also on display, but we were unable to photograph it as it was being refurbished behind a glass enclosure.
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| The museum's hallways are filled with stained glass windows depicting famous artists as saints |
 Vermeer's Milkmaid with its vibrant yellow and blue colors |
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