Amsterdam, part four

This is our last full day in Amsterdam. Anne and went to the Van Gogh museum in the morning to try and get the jump on the crowds. We rented the audio tour devices and I am especially glad we did because there there has been a fairly recent examination of letters written by van Gogh to relatives and friends that shed a lot more light on his thoughts about his art and his general state of mind throughout his artistic career. Van Gogh was much more than a "crazy artist that committed suicide". He often described many of his paintings in progress in letters to his brother, as it was his brother that financially supported him and marketed his paintings. He also seemed to have a good understanding of his mood swings and found some ways to manage them. This made the art much more enjoyable for me, as I not necessarily a big fan of his style.
After the museum tour, Anne and I picked up some souvenirs and took a leisurely walk back to the hotel. We spotted some sculpted iguanas in one of the parks and Anne took a picture of me getting to know one of them. We also saw a large size chess game going on in one of the squares, so that is another picture. A third is of a "floating garden" that we saw on one of the canals. Lastly, one is of Anne's dinner last night: "wilde Zeebaars". See if you can figure that one out! We are probably going to have to get better at our Dutch in the next week because we will be biking out in the more rural areas.