Yesterday I biked 10.8 kilometers in de Hoge Veluwe National Park, in order to get to the Kroller Muller Museum to see Vincent van Gogh. And Picasso. Oh yeah, and a Rodin sculpture. And a few other amazing artworks in a colossal sculpture garden that makes the Olympic Sculpture Park look puny.
In the middle of a huge park. With bike trails like the one you see here. Leading to deer, campgrounds, or a castle that was supposedly just a hunting lodge for the Kroller Mullers.
It was pretty amazing, let me tell you. I think it was the best day here so far, although it was very long.
To get to de Hoge Veluwe from Rotterdam, you must take a train to Uttrecht. Then from Uttrecht, take a train to Ede-Wageningen. Then from here, take a bus to Hoenderloo. Then get a chocolate croissant at the bakery since you are hungry. Now you can walk into the park and on your right, will be approximately 200 white bikes. You can take any one you'd like and bike to the museum.
I don't know which was better, the scuplture park or the museum.
I walked through the museum looking for Picasso and found him in an adorable owl made of metal.
And then I walked through the Van Gogh rooms and here is what I absolutely loved about this museum. Normally in museums I have been to before, you get to look at one van Gogh. And you think, wow, that's amazing, I love it, but you move on to something else. But here, Helene Kroller Muller collected enough Van Goghs that you could actually see his progression as an artist - he started out a little dark, but you see this great progression to brilliant color that's just spectacular. And I would never have known that unless I had seen them all together.
Also, my favorite, favorite, favorite painting is here: It's a Pisarro, and I looked at it 4 times. I went back right before closing to see it again.
And the scuplture park has this Rodin that just blew me away - I love his lines. And there were so many other sculptures. Amazing. I followed one trail around and it led to a bench where I sat and looked at Rodin and finished reading Love is a Mix Tape. I cried a lot when I got to the end. You know, that awkward sort of crying when your shoulders shake a little. It wasn't the part where she died, but in the part where he takes her hats to Central Park after her death. He puts notes on the hats that say "Free," but really he wants to write notes on them about how amazing their former owner was, and how much she would have loved cool people to have them, and I just couldn't take it anymore, all the art and beauty and sadness was too much to bear, so I sat in this gorgeous park and cried about how we just get to know people and start to love them just a little bit and then it feels like they get taken away from us too quickly.
Jonathan came over because he was following the trail around to the end. He said, "Oh, it ends here." I said "I'm crying because a main character just died." He said, "That's pretty sad. Are you okay?" I said yes, and then we briefly talked about how amazing this place was and then he left me to finish the book. This is something I appreciate about Jonathan: he is good at giving one space when one needs it. Also, he lent me his scarf when we got back to Rotterdam and were waiting for the metro and it was freezing. It is good to have kind people to travel with.
Then we biked back to the Hoenderloo entrance and since Poppy was staying at this place with a fantastic menu, we ate there. It might have been the nicest place I've ever eaten at. It was the sort of place where you want to take pictures of the food, but don't because that might not be appropriate. Also, you feel very underdressed in jeans. But Poppy reminded me that they are a b&b and see lots of travelers, so I shouldn't worry about it.
Dinner involved extremely mellow red wine, avocado mousse under tomato confit, tomatoes with goat cheese and red onions and basil, lamb, beet sauce, zucchini, Molly's duck, Maren's risotto, some sort of lentil that was pretty sweet, and perhaps the best potatoes I have ever eaten in my life. I am not a huge potato fan, but these were pretty good. Every single one of us had an empty plate at the end of dinner.
Then we waited for the bus at the Hoenderloo bus stop, and got on at 8:43, met a programmer named Harry who had just come back from the Boom festival, and then went on our way to Rotterdam. We did have an awkward interaction involving a train conductor and Molly's and my shared ticket, but this is par for the course. When we got to Rotterdam Central around 11:30 p.m., I wondered why the heck so many people were out and about at the station - it was just as busy as it is on a Friday at 5 p.m...
All in all, a pretty good day.
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