Amsterdam - Part 2

Onto day 2, 23rd July according to my sketchbooks! If only I kept one sketchbook at a time, you'd have a full history of my life! But I brought four different ones with me to Amsterdam, to suit the occasions and the workshops I had booked. Plus it's handy when you're painting juicy watercolours and you can do a sketch in another book while the paint is drying in the first one. Not that it was a problem in 38-degree dry heat in Amsterdam. (Definitely essential in Dublin any time of the year!)

So we met up with Deb and Pat in a gorgeous coffee shop Deb had discovered the day before - the directions included a sketch of a sailing boat in a window in the house across the road from the place. It made sense when we got there. But before this, I had already done a sketch of a house on a corner while Brendan was filming the hordes of bicycles coming down from the Museumplein area, going to work probably!

Then we spent the morning around Museumplein. We all went our way, sketching or photographing. I did my worst sketch of the week, in the garden at the back of the Rijksmuseum - I got too involved in the details, tried to pack in too much in the one sketch, and made a mess of it. Sap was falling from the tree above me, plus tiny little insects. You can actually see the sap stains on the sketchbook page - hopefully it doesn't show on the photo!

Then I did a quick one of the musicians in the cool tunnel at the entrance to the museum.

And spent the rest of the afternoon strolling the streets with Brendan, drinking a cool drink (pink ginger lemonade) at Bagels and Beans near our lovely AirBnB on Keizersgracht, and sketching bridge and canal and houses and bicycles in this beautiful area, away from the craziness of the touristy city centre.

A lovely day ended by a fab Indonesian meal with our niece Laura (Irish Laura) who is currently working in Amsterdam.