5 things I learned yesterday

The semester so far has been full of surprises. Surprise! You need to go get passport photos taken. Surprise! You are already registered for your classes, and a few extra. Surprise! European paper is slightly longer than an 8 1/2 by 11.

One good surprise was when Prof. Aay gave us our museum cards, which (although we probably paid for them long ago) now get us in to hundreds of museums around the country for free! Yesterday a few of us decided to break them in and go here:






































Now on to the things I learned:

1)
The Rijksmuseum is undergoing some extensive remodeling. It started in 2003 and will be finished sometime in 2013. So, for our stay here, the building doesn't look like this:

















but more like this:

























But, hey, a small wing of the museum is still open and all of the most famous paintings have been gathered there. We saw everything we'd have wanted to see anyway, without having to walk miles. I guess I'll just have to come back after 2013 to see the finished product!

2)
This painting is very big:





















3)
This painting is sort of small, but more colorful than I thought:
























4)
If you are over the age of 70, it will take you approximately 10 MINUTES to study this picture before moving on. And there were A LOT of people over 70 ahead of us in line. Needless to say, we spent a while waiting to see this:


5)
The I amsterdam art is a very popular photo-op, and getting a picture in front of it is nearly impossible when there are groups like this



















and this



















in front of it. But I managed to get one that I like.