Friday, May 20, 2016

Thursday May 19th Leiden and The Hague

Spent the morning in Leiden at the Lakenhal art museum and the city's rijksmuseum, which has an amazing collection of Etruscan Greek Roman and Egyptian artifacts. They even have a complete Egyptian burial temple, a gift from Anwar Sadat for helping deal with floods in Egypt. After lunch we sought out the hard-to-find little American Pilgrim Museum. The pilgrims had taken refuge in Holland but wore out there welcome here and set sail for New England from Leiden. The museum is in a house built in 1365 and furnished with pieces that old. The curator is an American who has lived here for at least 40 years, a real character who knows about all there is to know about the Pilgrims. (pic: museum room, 14th century floor, fireplace and wall)

We took a train to Den Haag to have dinner with old friends from our business days. While there we visited the Mauritshuis, a 200 year old art museum with a collection of the very top Dutch artists from their golden age of the 17th century. We saw Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring and his landscape View of Delft. An especially fun dinner with Tom and Susie, and then an easy train ride "home". (pics: Mauritshuis and pond)

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