Canal Houses

Since we are leaving for Munich early in the AM, we just went to two canal house museums. The first was the the Willet-Holthuysen Museum. This house was very ornate with lots of collectible items, such as this lovely silver chicken.
Mrs. W-H was a woman who was very rich who finally married, when she was 37, a man who had sold his collections a few years prior to continue living a wealthy life. After the marriage he was able to continue collecting all sorts of items and she collected fashion magazines. After 20 years he died and she lived on with her small dogs and cats. In her will she left the house and its contents to the city as a museum.

The other canal house we went to was not quite as ornate, but belonged to the van Loon family which started the Dutch East India Company. These people were genuine upper crust and did not decorate quite as fancy as the others. The van Loons were also confidants of the King.