Friday September 8,2017

After a lazy morning we finally headed out about 2:30 to try to find the Icelandic Air Office and sort out our cancelled flight.  It was raining off and on all day today so we got rather wet walking from the tram to where the office was located.  We found it but we were informed that Icelandic Air had moved their office to Germany about a month ago!  Of course the phone plan we got for our cell phone does not allow international calls, so we now have to figure out another way to be able to talk to them.  I don’t think that this will be easy to sort out by email.

Next on our agenda was a visit to the Van Gogh Museum. It is open until 10:00pm on Fridays and we niavely thought it wouldn’t be as busy during the evening.  Well, the line up was about 2 1/2 hours long, standing out in the rain, I might add…so we headed to the Rijk Museum Restaurant to see if we could get a nice hot cup of tea and order our tickets online. We did get our tea and the website to order tickets gave us all the information needed but didn’t have any place to actually order and pay for the tickets.  After much effort and trying a different browser I noticed a little order box at the very bottom of the screen that was so dark  we could barely see it. We ordered the tickets only to find out that we needed to download them and guess what, for some reason my phone doesn’t want to download!! and now our battery is getting very low.  We finally figure out a work around way to get the tickets and head over to the museum. Seems it is just that sort of day.
No pictures in the museum but there are a couple of places to take a photo with some oversized reproductions.There are a lot of paintings and drawings, many more than there were when we visited the old museum almost 40 years ago but I liked the old one better. Here is a photo of that building. When we were there so many years ago, I was in a large room surrounded by paintings with only a handful of other people. I had the feeling that if I could only turn around quickly enough I would find Vincent standing there, brush in hand.  It’s hard to explain but his presence was palpable in that room.  I have never forgotten how I felt that day, and I definitely didn’t experience that tonight.  The rooms of this very large modern museum were packed with people, it was noisy and we could barely move.  I looked for Vincent but he was no where to be found.  I guess I should have known that what I had experienced so many years ago was an amazing once in a life time experience. Here are a couple shots I was able to take in the museum just before we left when the crowds had thinned out.  It is huge, five floors all spread out with many flights of stairs. I thought it felt rather sterile. We had a bite to eat in the little restaurant there to break up our visit and finally left just before 10:00.  It is supposed to rain tomorrow morning but we are hoping for nicer afternoon.