Rijksmuseum van oudheden

The last museum I've visited is the Rijksmuseum van oudheden (Rapenburg 28, Leiden). It contains statues, glasses and other object from the antiquity. The main cultures present are Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. There is also object from Iraq and Syria as well as India. 

The museum is divided in two floors. The first floor is dedicated to Romans, specially in the area of The Netherkands; to Greeks, including statues and pottery; Middle Orient, mainly Syria and Iraq, including transparent and colored glass, statues and cuneiform scripts. There were also a big area containing different sorts of swords, from Romans to XIX century and weapons from Indonesia and other countries from the south east of Asia. Some of them were really impressive and massive, difficult to imagine an actual use for them.

The second floor has a big room for the history of The Netherlands in the Middle Ages. There is a great collection of pottery, statues, daily life tools (some of them are jewels) and even clothes or boats. There is also fossils from animals and humans. In this floor, there is another room dedicated to Greeks, with a focus on the pottery, hundreds of painted pots representing the life of Greeks, gods, etc. And statues from burials and gods.

If you like History and ancient objects, this is a must-seen in Leiden. The visit can take about 2 hours or more if you read everything about each object and the culture it is from. They count with mummies, sarcophagus and a big temple in the hall, so you'll be impressed from the beginning.

Boat trip in Leiden

Leiden has hundreds of canals. Besides, these canals are connected to other cities and even to lakes. For this reason, one of the last meetings with my friends here was a boat trip to a lake at the north of Leiden.

The boat was rented at the bridge in front of Harlemmerstraat. It was a little electric boat which cannot go over 5 km/h. A licence isn't necessary to drive it and it's very easy. It took an hour, more or less, to reach the lake. As you can see the lake is pretty big, but it's far enough to have a relaxing atmosphere, surrounded by fields, windmills and even cows.

The trip in boat is a great idea, specially on sunny days like the one we had, and the lake it a really enjoyable place to relax, had some food and drinks and hang out with friends. Seeing other boats isn't improbable because these sort of places, as well as the canals, are taken by loads of boats when the weather is nice.

Near the lake, there's a neighbourhood with big houses and backyards. They even have garages for the boats, some of them astonishingly big and beautiful. This isn't the only extraordinary thing you can see there. There is also some bussiness dedicated to build ships, and the place where the ships are stored are huge. Something impressive for someone who isn't used to see this kind of things, like me.

After spent an hour there, we had to go back to Leiden. In our way to return, and once inside Leiden, we bumped into a boat parade. We had to go out of that canal quickly because all the people was watching and yelling us, it seemed that we couldn't be there and we could get fined. So we turned back as fast as we could. We were told, afterwards, that day was the first summer vacation day and they throw a party all around the city with music, the boat parade, etc. 

We had a lot of fun that day, the views and the experience was incredible and for this reason I strongly recommend to do it if you have the chance.