Art Amsterdam, Animal Collective, and Texel Island

Last Saturday Kelly and I got free tickets to see the Art Amsterdam Exhibition. This exhibition showcases up-and-coming contemporary artists mostly from the Netherlands, but also from a variety of other countries. The amount of artwork was quite overwhelming. There was almost every medium imaginable. Some selected favorites below.

Tuesday night a bunch of us went to see Animal Collective at Paradiso, Amsterdams most famous venue. Paradiso was an old church that hippies took-over and turned into a concert venue in the 1960s. While the venue is cool, the show was probably the worst concert I have ever been to. The show was supposed to start with an opening act at 8:30. We got into the building a little before 9, but Animal Collective was already playing. Apparently the opening band didn't play for some reason. Animal Collective only played a couple of their good songs and the show was over around 10:30. They didn't even play an encore. Complete waste of time and money. 

Yesterday a few of us went to Texel Island (pronounced "tessel). Texel is the largest of the Frisan islands in the North Sea. Like a lot of the Netherlands, most if it has been reclaimed from the sea so there are massive dikes around most of it. We took our bikes on the train, then a ferry to get there. Once on the island we biked to the beach town of De Koog where we hung out on the beach for a few hours. 

We then headed north a few more kilometers to De Slufter nature preserve, which was beautiful. 

We cut making back to ferry pretty close, but made it on with 10 seconds to go! We ended our day by joining a good portion of the Funen crew at a "beach" near our apartments for a midnight bonfire.