Amsterdam. The bags and purses museum. And the TOP 5 'awesome' bags and purses.

There was a cute discreet museum somewhere in the streets in Amsterdam which was an exhibition of bags and purses.
The first room showed you the different techniques of bags, the second I think were fashion bags from the 20 and 21st century, and the third 16th to 19th.
It was, although quite small, one of my favourite museums. Just because of the range of designs of the bags. some were beautiful, some were random, some were outrageous and some were just stupid.

So in the spirit of bags and purses, I am going to do a little browsing and find the 5 most 'awesome' bags and purses. (And why they're awesome)

No 5: London Taxi Clutch

I must admit, I have a fetish for London Cabs, the first time I went to London for about 5 years I was shocked to see so many. I thought they only existed in TV.
Who wouldn't want to carry this around with them (except for maybe be men)? Its a bag in the shape of the cab!

And its £295. Only.


No.4: Metropolitan Cook Book Clutch

 Everybody checks there phone nowadays, so instead looking like everyone else, you can check your phone discreetly while looking like you're reading a cook book.

 And men like women who can cook as well, so maybe they'll be more attracted to you.

And you could totally dig the, 'just walking down the street with a book - smart' look.

Its £959, maybe you could just carry a real book though?


No 3: Blue parrot evening bag

I personally don't like 'bling'.
Perfect if you want to flaunt the fact that you're rich without basically drabbing yourself in diamonds. You could pass of the fact you bought it because its 'adorable'. See? It doesn't seem like you're flaunting this bag because of its 'bling'. Though really, you are. Abnoxious show-off.

Wait for it,
its £3,777. (If its worth that much, you are going to have to slip in how much it costs in converstion- example: 'This adorable bag was only 3777 pounds, its really cute isn't it?)

'Bling'

No. 2: V&V Small Soft Gun Tote

I have a gun, don't mess with me.
$625. To look deadly, without having to own a stupid gun. (To own one legally you have to be licensed, I think, I wouldn't know.)

AND........................... Number 1 is

£680

Just because it reminds me of

Amsterdam trip, part 3. The confessions of a confused heretic.

*Please note that when I say 'wet myself', I mean it figuratively. I have not wetted myself since I was 16.


So one of the 'must-see' attractions was the Amsterdam Dungeons.

I'm going to do a little copy and pasting now ...
'The Amsterdam Dungeon brings to life 500 years of dark history in 11 shows with 7 actors in 1 terrifying experience! Can you survive the horrific Plague during the 80 minute tour, or will you be discovering the dark secrets of the famous painter Rembrandt? Make sure you don’t get tortured by the executioner Peter Titelmann from the Spanish Inquisition or get lost in the mirror labyrinth! There is also the roller coaster for the really brave visitors!'


So thats fun, we entered, we had to take an embarassing photo where me and my brother got to pretend to execute our parents. And on 'one, two, three, SCREAM....'.
'aah...' whined one of us reluctantly.

We all queued, it was dark, cramped and none of us knew what to expect. There were heavy clanking, ghostly music and the atmosphere that we all help contribute to was nervous, borderline terrified.

A woman dressed up as a corpse maid drifted out from behind the curtains, her movements were slow, rigid and zombie-like. Suddenly she dived forward against the chains making loud rattling noise and making all of us wet our pants.
Obviously we pretended we weren't scared, rolling our eyes and laughing at others. Really, we were all laughing at our stupidity and how gullible we were.

She slithered through the queue, sniffing and making faces at us, stared at us until we could no longer keep our amusement in. We were led to the lifts and into the first 'show'.

We all sat in rows on what seemed similar to church pews and scrutinized the, um, wooden chair with clasps, in worry.

 Make sure you don’t get tortured by the executioner Peter Titelmann from the Spanish Inquisition

A man dressed in black robes appeared from the back, it was all so dark and when I first noticed him I wetted myself again. He held and swung a metal chain with a metal ball in the end, gave us a quick introduction about how if you don't believe in God and something about faith and confessions.
He asked for a volunteer.

I tried.

I really did.

But not hard enough.

I tried to avoid eye contact without being too obvious, but we were sitting in the front row.

'You!'

Damn, I should have known.

'Me?' Of course it was me. Nervous laughter. I always have lots of nervous laughs. Especially in drama.

I went sat in that even more daunting now - chair, had all these metal clasps hold me by the torso and hands to the chair.

He showed me a few, torture instruments and asked me if I would like to be tortured with them.
Of course not.

'Are you ready to confess?'

'Yes'

Good, do you confess?'

'Yes' Which I realise now I wasn't supposed to do. Here I was, supposedly in the Spanish Inquisition times, trialed against heresy. And I confessed at once.
I didn't really get it, if I'm honest.

'Well I find people who confess too quickly are usually lying about something.'

Boy was I really confused now.

'Confess you sins!'

'Um...'

'You have sinned so you must confess them.'

Now I'm really struggling.

So he made it easier for me and got a tongue remover metal thing out. (Bit of research tells me its a 'tongue tearer'. So jolly.)

'Stick out your tongue!'

So I do.

'Stick it out a bit more.'

'My tongue's really short' I don't think he heard me, I was whining and really panicking. My family laughed.('Awesome')

So I stuck my tongue out a bit more.

Obviously very skilled in acting tearing tongues out of people, he 'teared my tongue out'.

(Now here I got uber confused, I thought it was supposed to puncture a hole)

'How did that sound like?'

'Squelch?' I realise a little later that I couldn't talk.

'Now have you ever eaten tongue before?' Now I was starting to find him really menacing.

'Cow tongue." and duck tongue actually.

'What about a human tongue?'

'no'

He 'stuffed the tongue inside my mouth'

'How does that taste like?'

'Really nice.' nervous laugh.

'You don't have a tongue so how can you taste it you STUPID GIRL!'



Fantabaloosy Dozy.

Amsterdam trip, part 2. Just casually strolling around. And finding supermarkets.

I think we found two BBC channels that weren't the news on the TV, and that was all that was needed to make me and my little brother happy. The hotel room was 'tres chic'. God, I hope I don't have to do a holiday account in French when I go back to school.

Second day. Did we do much?
You bet we didn't.

Another holiday tradition is to find the nearest supermarket, buy loads of 'national delicacies' and breakfast and water and usually beer for my dad. And the supermarket usually becomes our favourite place.

So the plan of the day was to walk.

Walk and 'explore' as much places and see as much as possible.

A lot of places were quite obviously sculpted for tourism, with millions of endless lanes of steak houses. Because Amsterdamdians are meat eaters. Scary.

We saw a lot of clothes shops such as H&M, Superdry and a few others I forgot.

I was also wearing sandals which meant more than occasionaly I would stumble, quickly look around to check no one saw me, then just casualy stroll as normal.

The BEST part was when I found a shop called 'Sissy Boy'. In my little world of warped humour, I found that hilarious. When I pointed that out to my parents, I think they may have thought I was being immature. But nonetheless, they offered to take a picture of it with me.

I politely declined.

We walked on and on, like catholics on a pilgrimage. Looking at this, looking at that.

I am unsure about what you call those people who paint themselves in gold or silver than pose with people for pictures.

But I've seen a few good ones when I was in Belgium but the ones here were shocking.

Not in a good way either, for example....

This is the one I saw in Brussels.

The one in Amsterdam.

They would just dress themselves completely in a gorilla suit like one above. Where's the acting? Where's the statuesque? Where's the skill? Where's the origianlity?
Seriously, I could do that.

For lunch, we went into a classy bakery. We were deliberating on which sandwiched to buy when a piece of ceiling fell on the man behind the counter. We all just looked up in surprise and we all laughed nervously,
in harmony.

We walked.

I stumbled.

We walked.

Deciding to return to the hotel for a short break before coming out for supper, we retraced our route.

I had a photo taken in front of Sissy Boy.

Amsterdam trip, part 1. The lonely chess museum.

Day one, we arrived in Amsterdam. I find it hard to recall the exact weather, but it was gloomy with the occasional shower of Hollandaise rain.
Immediately, it was a rather unspoken subtle tradition, we took a taxi to our hotel. Marriot. (Not advertising them.) It was roughly 10 in the morning, (would have been 11 in the coutry we left - lovely Wales) we had woken up at about 6 ish and frankly our pathetic weak bodies were exhausted.
Pure trivia: tired in dutch is moe.
So our luggage was casually dropped in all relief and we all found ourselves doing star floats on the beds.
We manages to claw our way our usual 'just laze in the hotel forever and watch CNN News' trance and we pounded the pavements of busy busy touristy touristy Amsterdam.

The first thing that I thought we could perhaps explore was a chess museum. There was a big chessboard in a food court where, I assume, two strangers were having a chess game. Nearby, a large banner with the words 'Max Euwe-Centrum' inscripted hung, dripping and swaying. It was advertising the chess museum, named after an very not well known chess champion.

I an not that much of a chess fan, I know the rules, and likes to give up halfway through the game. But I wanted to visit and experience as much as possible and chess is okay.

After a quick bite of lunch in a Japanese restaurant located amongst many other restaurants. We returned to the black and white banners.

With the dramatic banners, and polited buzz around the public chess game between the stranger and the bearded stranger, it was disappointing not to find a grand entrance to a beautiful chess-inspired architectural building. On the contarary we found an A4 paper politely pointing out that the Chess exhibition (so now it was an exhibition!) could be found in building something on floor something. Wow. Unimpressed.

Our chess exhibition hunting lasted about 5 minutes. The building was a modest office with probably about 6 or 7 floors. It just simply felt wrong walking into an office where people in shirts and tie were walking around with coffee mugs (I always think that if someone is holding a coffee mug, it makes them a cool office worker). There was one of those commnication machine where you press the button of the floor if you want access. So the four of us, blundering in a building where we felt very out of place, pressed the button - "Yes, the chess museum?, come on up, second floor."

So we trailed nervously up the stairs, where a guy, probably used to seeing random tourists in his office, kindly gestured the way to the 'chess museum'

I can't really call it a 'chess museum' without quotation marks any longer.

An elderly guy greeted us, we placed our bags and coats in the lockers and he started the tour without any formal warning. There were a few exhibits of old chess pieces, old rule books, and old photos. But mainly it was all dedicated to Max Euwe. An Amsterdam guy who won the World chess championship years ago. He was detailed in explaning the history of Max Euwe, you could not fault his enthusiasm.

He gave a few sheets of paper, which probably talked about the chess champions, history all in tiny printed words that even in my nervous polite self I could not bring myself to read.

The room was about the size of my living room. Its not a small living room, but its not great. True it was packed with many many chess related stuff. Pictures, certificates, tactic books, chess boards. Our tour guide was very kind and humbling.

In a way, it was not a place that I would endear to visit again but if you have not been there you would gain more than you came with. Its FREE, I should have mentioned at the start. A lot of dedication was put into the exhibits, there's a library with dutch books (I am not mocking it, I am simply suggesting you should learn the language and spend an hour or two reading them) and chess boards which for chess fans - I'm sure its a fine environment to whip out your skills.

Though I was probably extrememly harsh on it, if you don't visit it for the exhibits, visit it for its owners. They're obviously very lovely people who are inspired by Max Euwe. And the chess museum must get very lonely. Perhaps for true chess fans they will appreciated it a lot more than I did.

A plucky bonus is you get free postcards, more than a dozen. A down side is the postcards are mainly of random chess players.

If one day you decide to visit Amsterdam, ignore the slighly negative things I have said, go visit it. And then send me a postcard.