Our first stop of the day was the Katten Kabinet museum. It is a museum dedicated to cat art and cats. We don’t own a cat and neither of us have ever had a cat as a pet, but we are now cat people because of Dylan our sons cat Dottie. We have the privilege of cat sitting for Dottie a few times a year and she has converted us to the kind of people who pay large sums to go to cat museums.
The Katten Kabinet was inspired by the property owners cat JP Morgan. The museum is in a large 18th century house overlooking one of Amsterdam’s canals and supposedly hosted John Adams when he was ambassador to the Netherlands..
The house itself is worth a visit, but it is also filled with art about cats by famous artists including Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Rembrandt. It is mostly a kitschy salute to cats that any cat lover will enjoy.
There was a nice corner where people could leave dedications to their cats.
After our time visiting the Katten Kabinet we headed towards the city center. Although we have purchased a three day transit pass we ended up walking everywhere today. Amsterdam is one of the great cities to walk in. The center is pretty compact, the canals make for a dynamic backdrop, and the architecture is interesting and mostly original as it was not heavily bombed in WWII.
Ton proposed we visit a shop that was supposed to have the best apple pie in Amsterdam so I of course agreed. When we arrived the threatening weather finally delivered on the threat. We were fortunate to find a table. The restaurant had been in business for over 100 years and the interior felt like it was little changed since they opened.
We nursed our shared slice of apple pie and coffees thru a big down pour. As soon as the rain ended we moved to our next stop which was even older than the Het Papenland.
The In’t Aepjen began operating in the 15th century and has been in business since then. It survived two major fires in 1450 and 1477 that burned down large parts of Amsterdam. It got its name the Monkey Bar because supposedly two sailors returning from a voyage to Sumatra in the 1500’s didn’t have money to pay their tab and instead traded the owners a monkey they had brought back.
The place was really cool. It is one of about 20 bars in Amsterdam that are collectively called brown bars because of the mahogany used in the interior. We discussed going on a bit of a brown bar crawl, but our better judgment got in the way of a good time.
Our last stop was Beurs passage a walkway between two roads that has been decorated as an aquarium. We had sprinted by it yesterday during a rainstorm and Ton wanted to go back and take a look at it.
While the walk way has been in place for centuries, the passage as you see it today is a recent development. After that we headed back to François just ahead of the next rain storm passing thru Amsterdam.
I think we are all experiencing the same weather systems as we have been dashing in and out of buildings to avoid, too. More rain tomorrow. Boo!
Hope your weather was better today. We had our best weather today, but it is supposed to rain most of the next 48 hours. But the next two days are not going out days but “work” days so I guess good timing.