Day 14: FOAM and Stedelijk

Early this morning there was thunder, lightning and heavy rain. My first in a while. I didn't finish up going out last night and this morning I'm glad. I've been feeling off colour for a couple of days and this morning it was a struggle to get up. It would have been a lot worse with a hangover! But I did eventually arise and my first mission was to do a loop of a different part of the city and end at a photographic gallery called FOAM. Before leaving I wanted to take a picture of out the window of my apartment into the cute back gardens of the adjoining buildings.

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On my journey I came across a massive tulip bulb market.

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The stalls stretched all the way down one of the canals.

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From there I made it to one of the larger canals (you guessed it ... more canal pictures).

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I made it to the FOAM gallery which appears to be connected to the FOAM photographic magazine.

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There were a number of really fantastic exhibitions that I really enjoyed. One was of a series of large format images of quite mundane corners and edges of tacky interiors but the detail and colour palettes was brilliant. Plus my ticket got me entry to the David Bowie by Duffy exhibition that I wanted to see but missed in London due to timing.

After that I headed back to the apartment to regroup. My plan was just to wander a bit more in the afternoon and so I headed in a new direction. Before long I reached this impressive building.

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It is the Rijksmuseum which is the premier art museum of the Netherlands but mainly 15-19th century. Not something I'm all that into. Anyway I wandered the grounds and came across this.

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Then I noticed the reflection of some buildings in the roof of a modern structure and stopped to try and capture it (not very well).

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Only then did I realize this modern structure was the Stedelijk Museum which had been on my to-see list. It's the permanent home of the national museum of modern art - much more my thing. So I stopped to wander around and it was AMAZING! There were some breathtaking photos, pictures and sculptures. In fact I found it far more inspiring than my visit to Tate Modern had been. So glad I stumbled into it.

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