Saturday/Sunday, July 25/July 26

Saturday: It was stormy and very windy. In Amsterdam trees were falling and hitting cars. We learned from Kees (who is in the American West, but knows more about our news than we do) that one person was killed. It was clear that we should just stay inside. 

Late in the day, we discovered the pilot light had been extinguished, probably by the wind coming down a vent, and we didn't have any hot water in the bathroom. Early, the next morning, I used What'sApp on my iPhone to contact Kees before he went to bed and he told me how to relight the pilot and all was good.

Sunday: The day dawned bright and sunny and we needed to get out of the house. We settled on visiting the Kroller-Muller Van Gogh museum at Otterloo. Peter, next door, had told us about this place last year and complained the other night that we had not been there and we really needed to go. It's about 50 minutes away and we were off.

We called it our Sunday drive. Years ago, when we didn't have much money, we would bundle up the kids and go for a drive through the country on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. 

To do it right, we needed to take secondary roads instead of A1 and the others. Linda used her iPhone navigation app to get us through some beautiful countryside that we had not seen before. Our general direction was east toward Germany.

There were not many, but you always see a windmill somewhere. This is a very Dutch countryside.

Its farm country with lots of cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, and

Alpacas, no less. What in the world are they doing here? And not in  just one field, but three or four down our road.

The chicken farmers proudly advertised what they were raising. At one point we saw 50-100 real "free range chickens" wandering around a field. Linda loved it.

Continuing down the road, we came upon many very well-maintained, brick houses with manicured front yards and things like these straw birds for decoration.

Free-Range Chickens

Some of the chickens were kept in conventional houses that looked a lot like those on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but better built and maintained.

This is what our roads look like - well paved and maintained and plenty of room for bikes on both sides, but not much for cars in the middle. This is a two way road.

This is to show the names of some of the little towns we passed through.

We arrived at the town of Otterlo and just outside of it the national park: De Hoge veLuwe. We used our museum cards to defray part of the cost. The museum is in the middle of this very large park (over 10,000 acres) and is about 3 kms from the entrance, but they provide 1500 bikes free of charge. The bikes are very basic, single speed with no cross bars. 

Linda decided to try it out and made me very nervous. The last time she was on a bike was here in Holland in 2011 and she fell off and broke her elbow. But these were like old Schwins that she had as a kid and she felt more comfortable with them.

We biked about 3 kms and came upon an area with a large playground, restaurant, and gift shop. We thought we had arrived. Not the van Gogh museum. We were told we were close and just had to cross the road and go about 100 meters. When we did that, there was a gate that you couldn't take a bike through. So, we just parked our bikes and moved on.

Surrounding the museum is a very large sculpture garden with mostly new stuff (late 20th century).

These were grouped under a pavillon. Many others were scattered throughout the garden.

This massive piece of art was a butterfly maybe emerging from its cocoon. Not sure. The artist is Jean Dubuffet and the piece is called Jardin d'email - 1974. There was a sign that invited visitors to walk on it.

This piece was just outside the museum building bordering a large grassy area. I liked it.

After about 1/2 hour of strolling through the woods/garden, we found our goal. This is the second largest collection of van Gogh paintings in the world. They were collected by the couple whose name is the museum's. I guess the largest may be in the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. Van Gogh is probably the artist that we are most familiar with. We have seen his work here in Holland and also in Provence multiple times.

This painting reminded Linda of the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C.

This is Heidi's favorite van Gogh.

After viewing the pictures, we had an espresso in the garden before heading back to the car park.

We asked several people which way to walk. As we started, we had to walk through a very large parking lot for the free bikes and Linda decided she could handle it again. I adjusted her seat and we biked off for only about 2 kms, back to the car park.

As we drove out of the park and into Otterlo, we found these houses proudly displaying van Gogh themed work. I think they are very proud to have the museum near them.

Sunflowers everywhere.

We parked in the town and found this restaurant on the corner that had umbrellas to protect us from the threatening clouds and schnitzel on the menu. Very appealing for me. Linda ordered a stew that was almost all chunks of meat in a dark sauce with a few carrots in the bottom. My schnitzel came with a mushroom sauce and we shared fries, baked potatoes, broccoli, and a salad. They sure don't skimp on the food.

Flowers on the table and hanging behind her.

Across from us was another restaurant with hay stacked in the upstairs loft.

And a new beer to us.

Otterlo traffic.

As we walked back to the car, there was this weird truck that a woman was using for catering. It contained a built-in kitchen.

It had started raining toward the end of our meal and continued most of the way home. We used some of the backroads we had used earlier and then onto A30 and A1.

I think we made the best use of that day.