Anyway, the museum was a little gift for me as I wandered the city centre, criss-crossing canals and leaping out of the way of tunnel-visioned cyclists on appealingly old-fashioned bikes of the sort I can relate to, having grown up in a flat city myself. [Digression: if you're the owner of a bike-tour operation, please consider that middle-aged tourists there to see the sights will not enjoy having to fit their bottoms onto g-string saddles and pedal along bent over racing handlebars, traumatising their cervical vertebrae by twisting their heads up so as to be able to actually see anything more than the patch of road ahead of the front wheel.]
I do love quirky and super-specific museums, and this is one of the best: three floors tracing the history of the handbag, all 500 years of it from a Flemish pouch to a Vivienne Westwood shiny red patent leather number. In between are 4,000 bags of all types made from every imaginable - and some unimaginable - kind of material. Leather, lace, velvet, plastic: yes; even, regrettably, snakeskin, tortoiseshell and stingray. But armadillo? Complete with face and feet? Eel, zebra, horse, shark and lizard? A leopard's head??? It was an education; and like all good lessons, left me with questions, chief amongst which was: What possible kind of outfit would you wear to complement the bag and matching shoes made from toad skin?
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