Breakfast was provided at the hostel, sort of. We went to a cafeteria in an adjoining building, where there was bread, crackers, honeycake, bananas, and juice from a machine dispenser (with a sign cautioning us to take only one glass). Coffee was provided by a machine as well, and there was jam and peanut butter on each table. It seemed pretty minimal after Norway, and we took the kids to a bakery on Leidsestraat for chocolate croissants. It was a short walk over to the Rijksmuseum (kids dripping crumbs as we walked) and to our surprise there were no lineups. We had to pay extra for the main exhibition, The Glory of the Golden Age, but it turned out to contain many of the highlights of the permanent collection we had studied the night before, plus loans. Rooms were arranged thematically, and those who didn't want to listen to the CD audioguides had the benefit of an excellent small informative booklet with a paragraph on each artwork. Of course, this also meant that not only did people stand one foot in front of a picture and listen to their headphones, they also stood there and flipped through their books or read agonizingly slowly. Still, it was an excellent exhibition, and as usual, by seeing things a little out of sequence we could have works to ourselves much of the time. I had never cared much for Dutch or Flemish art, but this exhibition did a lot to change my mind.
The rest of the museum was good as well. We all enjoyed the decorative arts (another area I usually find dreary), the kids particularly appreciating the dollhouses which N remembered from her visit to Amsterdam as a child, thirty years previous. We had lunch at the museum cafe: pasta for the kids, quiches for us, some quite good desserts, and a bottle of Belgian Trappist beer. After lunch we continued to the parts of the museum we hadn't yet seen: the Art Nouveau and Asian sections.
It was too early for dinner, but we weren't about to go to another museum that day. Instead we took the tram to Waterlooplein on the Amstel, to walk around. The kids were quite taken with the drawbridges (though here the confluence of cars, bikes, and pedestrians was particularly acute). We walked along the adjacent canals, stopping to rest on a public bench on Keizersgracht at Reguliersgracht. The weather, always mercurial, had changed to sunny; the temperature was perfect; and the fluffy clouds in the sky looked just like the ones in the landscapes we had seen earlier.
Eventually it was time for dinner at Tempo Doeloe. They weren't even sure they could seat us, and the place filled up shortly after opening. (We should have reserved, I later found out.) We ordered the fanciest rijstaffel this time, for two, plus an order of satay for the children. There were eighteen hot items plus condiments, and we were stuffed by the end. The food was better than Puri Mas, though the service was rather negligent (not that the staff were slacking off). Most annoyingly, they refused to give us tap water, and instead charged us NLG 13.50 for a bottle. After that, we waddled back to the hostel ("why are we going to a hospital?" asked Z) along Prinsengracht.