Night At The Museum

In the Dutch university town I live in we have quite a number of really good museums. Tourists from all over the world come here to enjoy paintings by Dutch masters, to see special types of tulips in the botanical garden, to marvel at the Egyptian mummies. Yet somehow in the six years I have lived in this town I had visited only a few of them.

Well, last Saturday we had the perfect opportunity: Museum Night. Museum Night has been an annual event in Amsterdam for quite some years now, but this was the first time it was organized in my town. Seven large museums were open from 8pm until 1am with afterparties at local clubs following. They had bands playing next to Rembrandt paintings, cocktail bars within exhibitions about Japanese folklore, lounge areas in the botanical gardens, DJs in Egyptian temples, lectures, workshops, performance art...

Since most of these museums are located within the historical center of the city, they were all within walking distance. However, there were also buses to take you from one place to the next. And, yes, as you would expect from Holland, there were bike taxis (riksjas) and also boats to take you to museums located next to canals...

Mr Bee and I had a great night. We got to see four museums in one night. We learned things about our city we didn't even know. We were driven around in a riskja. We took a tour in a boat. We enjoyed the lights from the canals.

My town. picture from flickr

Perfect combo of going out, having a drink and still feeling like we did something interesting with our night....