Legally Blonde's Proceedings

I really wanted to visit Bruges, Belgium.  After doing a little research, I decided I probably didn't need a ton of time to see Bruges, so a day trip from Amsterdam would work.  There isn't a straight shot from Amsterdam to Bruges by train, so I decided to look for a tour.  I almost always book my tours for European travels via Viator.  They don't actually run the tours, but they are a good place where local tour groups are combined together.  I found a 12 hour day tour to Bruges.  After reading about the tour, and the comments (comments are always important on these), I found that this was mostly an "on your own in Bruges day", which is exactly what I wanted. We boarded a double decker travel bus and had a 3 hour (ours was a bit longer because of traffic) drive into Belgium.  From the bus drop-off, our tour guide walked us into the heart of town, giving us some direction and information as we went.  That probably lasted about 30-45 minutes, ...

I decided Sunday was the day for museums in Amsterdam, so on July 15th, I headed out from my hotel on foot and walked the 25 minutes or so to the Van Gogh Museum.  You have to have timed tickets for the Van Gogh Museum (and they only sell them online).  I had a 9:00 a.m. ticket, which is when they opened.  They didn't allow pictures inside, but they have a lot of art by Van Gogh (obviously), some art from his friends, and did a good job telling the story of his life, and of the events after his death that led to him becoming the famous artist we know today... I bought this card at the Van Gogh museum shop (took the pic in the next museum).  I liked this one a lot, but one of the things that was really neat about the museum is that they had a recording of what this painting and another looked like under a microscope.  The swirls of paint that you can't see with the naked eye were amazing.  This painting was actually painted on the beach, and as you look...