Amsterdam is a fun city with lots of stuff to do (for adults that is…). Tourists will probably think of the red light district and the many coffee shops that sell drugs instead of coffee, but I meant the museums this time. We have the Rijksmuseum (the best), Van Goghmuseum, Anne Frankhuis, Sexmuseum, Torture Museum, et cetera, et cetera. One of the museums is called Scheepvaartmuseum, which is a nautical museum, more like the golden age-kind than the marine kind though. I went there, and guess what? I did not like it.

So first let me stress why I already had low expectations: I dislike boats. I don’t love being on a boat, I don’t love the whole nautical lifestyle and I detest the combination of navy blue stripes and white stripes, hihi. However, I was hoping that the Scheepvaartmuseum may make me more enthusiastic about boats. It has happened to me before that I got excited about something I found very boring (rope for example!), thanks to a museum. Scheepvaartmuseum was, however, not going to do this for me.

When I came in I was very impressed with the building, which is huge and old looking from the outside, but very nice and wide open on the inside. It has a north section, a west section and an east section, all with their own specialities. One holds the temporary expositions, one has the paintings and the little boat replica’s, and the most interesting one is North, cause that has the boat of the king, and the huge rebuild boat East Indiaman Amsterdam. It was fun to walk around and experience what it was like on that boat, and there was even this interactive thing that would explain more about the Dutch history with boats, but it was simply not very engaging.

Sure you could listen to an audio tour, but the things on display are not very attractive for some reason. People walked by pretty swiftly, and I mostly disliked that there was sooo much emphasis on the sailing we do, like the modern sailing with small sail boats, like at the Olympics. It was very stupid, especially cause those things are highly sponsored by a bank and some insurance company, which seems a bit off for a government kinda organisation like a museum.

The photos below are the most fun things I could find… But I was pretty disappointed, I think Gemeente Amsterdam could use that beautiful building for way better things than this museum.