Today we returned to Amsterdam to visit the Hermitage museum. It was really unfortunate timing because we arrived in The Netherlands literally on the day that the Van Gough museum closed for 7 months for renovations. In another week the Hermitage will have a new exhibit featuring many of Van Gough’s paintings from the closed museum. So while we were in Amsterdam, those paintings were in limbo. Hopefully later in the trip we might be able to stop back to see the new exhibit. We spent most of the day in the Hermitage (though compared to the National Gallery in London and the Muses d’Orsay in Paris it was somewhat disappointing). After the museum we walked around the city a bit more before we took the train to downtown Haarlem where we explored a bit and got groceries for dinner. It was the same chain grocery store so we picked up the same Caprese pasta salad and a sun dried tomato salad. We had another laid back night at the hostel watching a Stephen Fry documentary and eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. (Which the hostel sold.)