We had rain in the night and early morning, but it stopped by mid morning. We enjoyed a buffet breakfast in the hotel before heading out to the Rijks Museum. The museum is the National Art Gallery that has existed for more than 200 years. In 2013 they completed a ten-year renovation and the museum is beautiful. The building is housed in a Dutch Neo-Renaissance style brick building designed by architect Petrus J.H. Cuypers.

The museum contains an enormous collection (8,000 objects on display out of a collection of more than 1,000,0000 objects) of fine art including paintings, sculpture, furniture, dollhouses, china, glassware, silver, prints, drawings, photography, an incredible collection of art books and a large Asian art collection. Probably the most famous piece of art is Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” which is an extraordinary and enormous painting measuring 12 by 14 feet. Rembrandt was a Dutch painter who painted this group portrait of a local militia company in 1642. The museum also has a popular painting by Jan Willem Pieneman depicting the Battle of Waterloo painted in 1824. This painting is nearly 19 by 27 feet. We spent about five hours in the museum and still did not see everything there is to see. We did see lots of tall Dutch people, people of brown colors, Asians, nip slips and butt cracks in many paintings…. but no trash or cheese.

On the walk home to our hotel we stopped to have fish and chips at a local restaurant. We arrived back at our hotel about 6:30pm as it was beginning to sprinkle. The weather forecast was showing an 80% chance of showers this evening.