Amsterdam: Invaders, Other Street Art, Public Art, Buildings, and Bicycles!? (Part TwoI)

This is part two of a series of posts sharing the pictures I took on vacation in Europe in June/July 2026. you can find Part One here:

PART ONE

Part one was just the first day we were in Amsterdam and spent the day walking around the centre part of the city taking in the sights, admiring the old buildings, marvelling at all the BICYCLES, checking out street art and looking for Space Invaders. The next few days we spent in galleries (which I'll probably just do separate posts about!). So this post has pictures of things we saw on the way to and from said galleries over the next two days...

The first day we went to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and spent most of the day there. The second day we went to the Van Gogh museum in the morning (and a bit of the afternoon?) and the Moco Museum Amsterdam later in the afternoon.

Most of the route to the Rijksmuseum we'd already walked a lot of in our search for Space Invaders the first day, so there wasn't a pile of new pictures to add. The Van Gogh Museum and the Moco Museum Amsterdam are all in the same area as the Rijksmuseum, so there are even fewer photos for the second day...

I'd made a mistake of mentioning to Amanda that there was this thing called the I AMsterdam card... which was a pass that could get you into a BUNCH of things... and Amanda is a sucker for a GOOD DEAL... so my list of things we COULD do in Amsterdam, suddenly became a checklist of all the things we MUST do - PLUS a bunch of other stuff was added by Amanda... just because it was FREE!! (entry included with the pass!).

The ONE THING that wasn't included was the Van Gogh museum - which the people selling the I AMsterdam Card told us we were unlikely to get into if we didn't already have tickets, because they were usually sold out weeks in advance! After a bit of a panic, when we later got back to the hotel, we found there were tickets available for just about any time we were going to be there over the next week, so we booked tickets for the very next day! 

While panicking about the Van Gogh museum, I also remembered that the same often happens with the Louvre and Musee D'Orsay, and so I made a mental note to check those and potentially book tickets for when we were in Paris... but then when there was zero problem getting tickets for the Van Gogh museum, I completely forgot about the Louvre and Musee D'Orsay... 

Space Invader we spotted on the way to the Rijksmuseum.

Another Space Invader on the way to the Rijksmuseum

Detail of the above - note the two rows of the small drab tiles below (that I noticed near some of the other invaders in part one! 

Yet another Space Invader on the way to the Rijksmuseum.

Getting closer. 

Closer Still! 

it looks like there was another of the two lines of rows above it... but one of the rows has fallen off or been chipped off.

Also I'm not sure what the yellow and reddish-orange thing is off to the left of it... is it some sort of street art installation...? I can't make out what it's supposed to be (if it's supposed to be anything!?). Or perhaps it was part of a bigger thing that was broken...!? Or maybe it's just a colourful bit of garbage stuck to the wall!? 

This one we spotted after we left the Rijksmuseum. Amanda had not yet spotted it and wondered why I was backing away from her and was about to yell at me, concerned I was going to back all the way into the bike lane! 

Detail of the Invader above. 

Another Invader found on the way back to the hotel. Can you spot it...? 

There it is! 

Amanda was getting right into the hunt for these - and started taking selfies of herself with a lot of them... I'm not entirely sure what she was doing with said selfies...? It's not like she posts much of anything on social media anymore... not can I think of anyone she'd send them to (other than me!?) 

Other public art in Amsterdam

These were some really fun lizards cast in bronze(?) that we spotted the second day on the way to the Van Gogh museum! They lined the stone edges along two sides of a small green space... 

But then I noticed there were some even in the grass!! (how do they MOW it!?) 

The only invaders we saw that day were the ones IN THE MOCO MUSEUM!?

This one was on display in the museum.

The info posted along with the invader in the museum. 

apparently a collab between Invader and Damien Hirst...? 

This Space Invader was located IN THE GIFT SHOP!?

(yes, that is a €9500.00 price tag!?) 

Tempted as I was, it was a little out of my price range... Totally would have been able to get that in the luggage, without any problems... could not say the same for ALL THE BOOKS I ended up buying along the way!? 

random public sculpture of naked dude down some side street... 

More Building details/ornamentation... 

close-up details of a building I'd seen the other day?

More of the same. 

Building detail/publis statuary... there was a fair bit of this... I did not take pictures of EVERYONE I saw...  I was already taking hundreds of photos per day... I had to draw the line somewhere. 

Another of the Foot Print casts I mentioned in Part One. 

Stay tuned for Part Three, which covers the next day or two of wandering around Amsterdam. 

Portraits of Amanda

 I did a few portraits of Amanda while on our trip to Europe, when we had idle moments... which were... few... 

The first was at the Saskatoon Airport before our journey had really even begun!

We were at the airport hours early, so I thought I might as well get started on the drawing! 

The next wasn't until our third or fourth day in Amsterdam, when we stopped to have a meal at the Vegan Temple Bar - I pulled out my small sketchbook - which I carried with me EVERY DAY of the vacation... JUST IN CASE!!

The next was waiting at Amsterdam Centraal station

While we were waiting for our train to France! 

A few days later when we were in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Amanda actually joined a work meeting via her computer. 

The meeting was so long, not only did I DRAW a picture of her... 

I also managed to COLOUR it!? 

finally, on our first morning in Paris, I woke up STUPID early and could not get back to sleep. Amanda was still sleeping, so I drew the apartment from the little table I ate breakfast at. 

The temperature on the afternoon when we arrived was +38°C and stayed around there for most of our stay... it dropped to 31°C in the middle of the night... 

The apartment we rented was NOT air-conditioned, however... Nor did it have screens on the windows... So I didn't feel really confident about leaving the windows open all night and not having bats or rats or mosquitoes or any other number of pests joining us! We got enough flies and mosquitoes in during the hours we were there and awake and had the windows open! 

I still have three or four pictures (or maybe five..?) that I started while I was in Europe, but need to finish up (mostly colouring... and touching up here and there...?). And then the plan was to finish filling up the sketchbooks I'd taken on the trip with drawings done from the thousands of photos I took while there! 

Sketches from Carcassonne

Amanda and I were in Europe for a good chunk of June and the first bit of July. 

I had hoped to do a lot of drawing there. I did some. Not as much as I'd hoped...

I took a lot of pictures and will probably do more drawing from those pictures now that we are home. Eventually I'll get around to sharing them here. Maybe. 

These are a few sketches I did in Carcassonne. 

(There are others I did in the castle I'll share at some point!) 

Both of these were on Pont Neuf where we were waiting for the Tour de France riders to roll by at the beginning of Stage Four of the 2026 Tour de France. We were there really early, as I had expected a lot of people might want to hang out here to take pictures.. so I had a lot of time to draw - while standing around in the +38°C heat!! 

THIS is the reason why - from Pont Neuf there was a pretty great view of the castle of Carcassonne! 

So I could end up with shots like...

This is one of my favourites. In that line in the foreground, on the left in yellow is the current race leader #1 Tadej Pogačar, who had won the tour the previous year and won it again this year! On the other end of the line is #32 Derek Gee-West - the sole Canadian riding in the Tour this year! 

If they look like they're out for a chill, casual ride... it's because they are. This was part of the Depart Fictif - where they rolled through town past all the crowds and sites... the ACTUAL start of the stage was a few kilometres outside of town. it was already +38°C when they rolled by and expected to be +40°C as the day went on, so there was no need to do more than what was necessary to get them to the start! 

This veiw is looking the other way down the street, where we would first see the cyclists approaching from. 

Like so...

Both of the sketches were drawn on location, but the colouring with watercolours was done later. 

At some point I'll post some more pics of drawings I've done (and will do...).

AND at some point, I'll probably do a post on the Bike Blog about the carnival that was the depart for the fourth stage of the 2026 Tour de France! (and maybe something about bicycles in Amsterdam and Paris...?). We shall see...