Days after I posted the final chapter of Maestro Keys, The Fabulous Wife and I went on our first extended trip since before the pandemic.
I’d been wanting to return to Europe for a while, but The Fabulous Wife was more Covid-averse — until she learned that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is hosting a special exhibit bringing together 28 of the 37 paintings widely attributed to the 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. She’s adored Vermeer’s work since her first glimpse of The Little Street during our prior visit to Amsterdam in 1996.
The Little Street
The everyday realism, the vivid detail, and the voyeuristic edge of Vermeer’s subjects — the two women in The Little Street show no sign of knowing they’re being observed — captivated The Fabulous Wife. “I want to see that exhibition,” she announced last December. I immediately agreed. And since we were going that far, why not add a second destination to the itinerary? We’d never been to Berlin, and had heard conflicting opinions about it, so we decided to go there too.