Amsterdam!!

Just before Christmas I went to Amsterdam on a college trip- supposedly to look around the museums, of which there are numerous all within walking distance. I spent most of the time walking- but not necessarily around the museums. Did you know that on practially every street there is part of a canal, it's incredible! And there are no proper road markings, just dips in the 'pavement' so at any moment you could get attacked by a tram or run over by a manic cyclist! It made for entertaining walking.
Quite a few of the big galleries we went to as a whole group were more for the fine art people- empty rooms with a blue light, empty rooms with a purple light , empty rooms with no lights (are we sure this is a gallery?), empty rooms except for something ticking ominously in the corner (are you sure this isn't just some kind of bizarre hoax?)- the fashion/textile people ended up wandering around drawing bits of the staircase or looking out of the windows sketching the buildings opposite- saying that, there was a quite interesting window in one of the buildings which had a really cute teapot in it...here it is:

One of the big galleries was good- but not for textiles. I have a massive thing about ceramics and pottery though so this was definitely a good one for me. Check out the textures in these bad boys!!!

Aren't they gorgeous?!
Still, again, not many textiles- I don't count someone's old clothing as my kind of textiles although the fashion people might like it. However, sitting in the cafe mulling over where to go next in the anthill of a gallery I happened to look up and notice the light....

I'm probably making the galleries sound really boring- but honestly they're not, they just weren't for me. The one that was for me was a really cute handbag museum where they had fantastic bags there! One of them even had an inbuilt working telephone!

 

Or how about one that looks like a champagne bucket?

On the very last day, it very prettily (and quite scarily!) snowed- the canals looked particularly magical...

All in all, a fab week!