Amsterdam and Haarlem

I chose an Airbnb on the outskirts of town because of its proximity to my Monday morning destination: the Royal FloraHolland flower auction. I've heard it's the largest building in Europe and to put its size in perspective, the warehouse has three local bus stops on the perimeter of the building! The public can tour a portion of it via an overhead walkway and see a glimpse of the action. Part of me loved seeing the variety of cut flowers and the whole place smelled like a florist shop, but I was equally enthralled by the logistics of what I was seeing as flowers came in from around the world (including the Netherlands), were bid on, and were sorted to the various buyers before being shipped across Europe. One of the things I learned was that in a Dutch auction, it starts at the highest potential price and the first one to bid wins. At any given moment there are two items up for bid simultaneously to keep things moving, and because the warehouse is so large there's an overhead tram system for the flowers faster in addition to all the carts driven on the warehouse floor. It was mesmerizing to see them in action.

In this part of the warehouse, the carts moved along automated tracks to the bidding area; note the bicycle parking for getting around inside the warehouse.

Once the flowers on a cart is bid on, it's divided up based on the buyers and workers drive all or parts of it to the winners. 

Delivering buckets of flowers after the bidding to the "neighborhoods" of buyers. Once a mixed cart is full it's moved to another area of the warehouse for transport.

Before leaving, they had a green screen where you could insert yourself into the action, and I couldn't resist.

Fun with the green screen. 

It's like I'm in the auction room. 

How flower distribution would've looked decades ago.

The auction happens so early that I still got to the city center just as things were opening up. I rented a bike for the day and headed to the nearby town of Haarlem. It was about 11 miles, almost entirely flat, and other than my phone's navigation occasionally disagreeing with the signs, was a mostly straight shot along bike paths and bike lanes.

waterfront in Haarlem

As I arrived at the city center, I was greeted with a performance on their church's bell tower.

De Adriaan windmill

I biked around a little, enjoying the charming architecture before taking a train back to Amsterdam for my last stop: the Rijksmuseum. It's the national art and history museum, and had a Rembrandt exhibit that was fantastic in honor of the 350th anniversary of his death. His etchings were incredible, and I appreciated the thought he put into his biblical subjects.

The Rijksmuseum was designed by the same architect as the central train station.

The art history library

Rembrandt used himself as a model to hone his skills at capturing facial expressions; this was one of my favorites.

Christ in Gethsemane; note the disciples sleeping in the lower left corner as the mob in the background comes to take him.

Standing trial

The Good Samaritan

Woman at the well

"The Hundred Guilder" etching of Matthew 19 (nicknamed because it was so commercially successful)

Sketch of Christ washing the disciples' feet

Peter betraying Christ (who is in the background, looking back at him)

Not sure why this wealthy couple decided their wedding portrait required two canvases instead of one, but it means the paintings today belong to separate collections. It was a big deal to see them displayed together.

...such a big deal that the museum had these large playmobil versions of them on display.

I tried to soak in as much of the museum as possible before it closed, and afterward biked along the canals before returning to the airport for my flight back to Paris.

Canal in the Jordaan neighborhood

It wasn't too late when I landed at Orly in Paris, but by the time I reunited with my big backpack in central Paris and travelled to Versailles, it was another late night and sleep came easily.