We spent all day today getting a healthy dose of cultue. First we went to Our Lord in the Attic church, which is a Roman Catholic church that a wealthy merchant built in his attic as a secret church when the Calvinists outlawed the practice of Catholicism. The church seats about 150 people and even has an organ. It was used for about 200 years until Catholicism was allowed again and they built a regular huge church. Lots of VERY narrow, circular, steep, tiny stairs, which scared me. But it was a very interesting esxperience.
Then we continued our meandering along a tiny canal to Oude Kerk (Old Church) which is the oldest building in Amsterdam, established in 1306. It started out as a Roman Catholic church then was switched to Puritan in 1578. It was falling down in 1955 and was purchased for a song and has undergone an extensive restoration. The ceiling is all wood, like an upside-side down boat hull, which makes the acoustics fabulous. Nowadays it is no longer used as a church but retains many church features and still has over a thousand graves under the stone slab floor and 4 organs that are used for concerts. We really emnjoyed our time there. An interesting aspect of Amsterdam is that the church is in the red light district so there were ladies in their windows open for business (yes, on a Saturday morning), right across the alley from the church and right next door to a school. That's just the way life is here.
And then JACKPOT! We discovered a Dutch chocolatier and a few minutes later a Belgian chocolatier. Now my mission is to find them again when we get back from Paris so I can bring some home.
Last on the culture list was a visit to the National Maritime Museum. I mostly went because my sister really wanted to go and see the ship models. I expected it to be boring but figured I would accompany her anyway. And boy how wrong I was.
Looking on the museum map, every room sounded terminally boring. We hit the ship models first and they were fascinating. Then we wandered into the ship decorations display that had a bunch of carved figureheads and rudder heads along the middle of a long room with a virtual display of water rushing below them all down the middle of the room. We sat there for quite awhile. Then we moved into the navigation instrument room--ho hum, I hear you say. But their display setup was so creative and interesting, it just made us want to look. The following room was photographs (I thought that would definitely be the point at which boredom set in) and was so intriguing that we stayed far longer than we anticipated. The room was set up with comfy wing-back chairs arranged in groups around coffee tables. Each chair had a photo album in front of it on the coffee table, so you sit in the chair, push the English button on the chair arm, and a voice in the back of the chair starts telling you stories about the person who took the photos and what the photos are about. We moved from chair to chair, loving every minute.
We went on a virtual reality sea voyage through time and then spent a fair amount of time in their unusually good gift shop. And there's still stuff we want to go back and see. It is by far the best and most creatively designed maritime museum I have ever seen.
Tomorrow we take the high speed train for Paris, which takes about 3.5 hours. We plan to do mostly very touristy things and will avoid the Louvre because there just isn't enough time.
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