Amsterdam

The next segment of our winter break travel itinerary has taken us to The Netherlands (a.k.a. "Holland"). We flew to Amsterdam on a budget flight that allowed only one piece of carry on luggage (checked bags took the "budget" out of the flight cost), so we went back-packing, just like our students are doing.

Our Amsterdam hotel was also on the low cost side, but was very well located, just outside the oldest part of the city, in the Museum District, which was good, because museums were what we came to see. A 24-hour tram pass helped us get around more quickly, as our goal was to get as much out of the limited time as possible.

Dam Square, Amsterdam

Tuesday morning we started out at the Anne Frank house. It was my third time through (Mary's second), but the effect does not wear off. There we purchased our Museum Card, which offers free or reduced admission to dozens of museums around the country, and continued to De Nieuwe Kerk (The New Church -- new is relative, as it was built around 1400), which was hosting a major exhibit on Judaism.

Walking along the canals and old streets, where many buildings date to the 17th century, was a treat in itself as we went on to Oude Kerk (The Old Church, dating from 1306), which unfortunately is in the middle of Amsterdam's infamous Red Light District today. I'm sure the hundreds of pious Dutch Reformed buried beneath this church are spinning in their graves about what has happened to the neighborhood.

Oude Kerk, the interior was probably never as ornate as cathedrals in England or Spain, but the Calvinists stripped their churches bare.

We stopped briefly by the Begijnhof, established in the 14th century as a residence for pious women who lived like nuns, although they took no monastic vows. The Amsterdam Museum helped us learn about the history of the city. We visited Rembrandt's House, and "Our Lord in the Attic," a private home in which a wealthy patron converted two upper floors to a clandestine Catholic church after Catholicism was banned in the Reformation. The church carried on undetected for two centuries!

The church in the attic

We topped off this long day with a visit to the Verzetsmuseum, which told the fascinating story of the Dutch Resistance against the Nazi occupation. I geeked out at the exhibits on clandestine radio equipment.

Radio in a match box

That was day one. We were weary, but not too tired to get up the next day to see the Rijksmuseum. This huge, state museum of the Netherlands would normally take a day all by itself, but since it is under renovation, only its selected treasures were on display, allowing us to zip through relatively quickly. The Van Goth Museum is very close by, so we got through that the same morning.

Mark inserts himself into Rembrandt's famous Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum

A free lunchtime concert was being offered in the smaller recital hall of the famous Concertgebouw concert venue. There was such a crowd we almost didn't get in, but it was wonderful to see and to spend some time off our feet. The music wasn't bad, either. It was 16th century music played by a quartet of period blokfluiten (in English, we call them recorders).

In the afternoon we toured two very small museums, Willet-Holthuysen and Van Loon, that show off the old canal houses of wealthy Amsterdam merchants at various periods of history. We capped it all off with a visit to the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, which is neither royal nor a palace, in the strictest sense, but more the ceremonial city hall. It was already after dark when we caught our train to Haarlem.