Van Gogh Means You Must Go!

(Editor: Wait, I thought “UNESCO means you must go!”  Blogger: It does, but the Iron Tourist believes in being flexible.  Besides, the headline re Van Gogh also works.)

I’m not sure why, but when I booked our Van Gogh Museum tickets, I also booked audio guides for the both of us.  We walked the 0.8 miles to the museum, reveling in both the post-Milan area cool temperature and the street scenes of Amsterdam.  

I wasn’t sure about the audio guide, but we agreed to do the Highlights Tour.  It was the right decision, as we saw the best of the Van Gogh Museum in about 90 minutes (the audio guide claims it’s a 45 minute tour, but that doesn’t include dealing with crowds, not being able to easily find the non-sequentially numbered highlights, and looking at other art that grabs your attention.

Of modest interest is that the narrator on the audio guide pronounced his name "Van Goff" instead of the Americanized "Van Gogh" that we are all familiar with.  Rather than confuse people by haughtily pronouncing it "Van Goff," I'm going to stick with the more familiar "Van Gogh."  Besides, saying "Van Goff means you must go" doesn't work at all.

Instead of starting at 1 and going to the last painting, the painting are numbered in a totally random order, meaning you are looking for exhibit 19, then exhibit 56, then exhibit 34, etc.  It made no sense.  Why not number from 1-200 (or so)?

Well, I suppose the museum authorities thought it more of a game than a struggle, but they would be wrong.

Anyhow, Van Gogh is quite the artist (Editor: Really going out on a limb there eh.  Blogger: I hear you!  Editor: Wait, that’s about him cutting off his left ear with a knife isn’t it?).  Rather than go into massive detail here about his paintings, his life, and his death, I’m going to show you the pictures I took of nearly all of the pictures on the Greatest Hits tour in the library.  

When I took the photos of the paintings, I had this fantasy that I would look up the names of all the paintings and add the name under each painting.  Then the reality of time intervened.