by Wayne Toepp, high school and middle school art teacher

Students in the Seventeenth Century Dutch and Flemish art history course traveled to Amsterdam from March 28th through April 6th, visiting several museum collections topical to the course as well as learning a great deal about Dutch life and culture. We stayed at the Hotel Arena, situated in the trending Oosterpark in Amsterdam for the full nine days, though we took day trips to Antwerp, The Hague, Delft and Haarlem. The Dutch rail system was a wonder of pleasant efficiency – most of our destinations were under an hour’s train ride, except Antwerp which was just over two hours. The itinerary included visits to the Rijksmuseum, the Frans Hals Museum, the Mauritshuis, Rembrandthuis, Antwerp Cathedral, the Stedelijk, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Oude Kirche. We scheduled most of our museum visits in the morning, had wonderful lunches together, usually outside in the sunny spring weather, and then students had the afternoon to explore the city before we all met up for dinner. Our dinners were invariably fabulous and included a diverse range of cuisines including Italian, Thai, Chinese, Ethiopian and MIddle Eastern restaurants. We all arrived back home ready to sleep in for a couple of days, yet full of inspiration from our visit!