Day 5 in Amsterdam

Hello folks,

We started out today with a visit to De Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church), which is right next to the hotel where we are staying. It has been closed for the last couple of days for the installation of an exhibit called the "World Press Photo Exhibit". Both the church and the exhibition were a terrific visit. The church is where the King is installed and manages to be plain and very impressive.  The exhibition featured photos and short clips that were not only excellent in quality, but left you with a lasting, almost haunting feeling. Some of the photos confronted real issues around the world, some of them rather sad. 

Photo Exhibit at the New Church

The Choir Screen at the new Church

Our next stop was the Oude Kerk (old church) which had smaller exhibits, but it is a wonderful building to see. The church did have an organ concert playing while we visited which was very nice as well. 

Organ at the old Church

Linda with Rembrandt's wife at the Old Church

Old guy - Old Church

 We then visited the National Maritime Museum, which has all sorts of displays about Dutch sailing history, maps, navigation instruments, ship models and also includes a full sized tall ship that you can explore.  This will help to get us prepared for our bike and barge trip coming up starting tomorrow. 

On the tall Ship at the Maritime Museum

On the Tall Ship

In the Captains Quarters

Ship's Decorations

 

We walked over to meet two of our friends, Vickie and Karin, who arrived earlier today.  We all walked around the town a bit and found a restaurant that seemed to be packed with local folks. We was great that we could all celebrate Vickie's birthday together, even if we were a day early.  Our waiter told us that the restaurant has been in business there for one hundred and sixty years. 

Karin and Vickie

We walked back, and walked by the dock where we will board the Merlijn tomorrow.  The boat is there, so we are planning to go over at about 11:00 in the morning, drop off our luggage, and go for a final walk around town.  It is kind of sad to think that we are just about done with this phase of our trip.

Here is a link to the pictures that we have taken during our visit to Amsterdam.  Some of them have appeard in the blog over the last several days, but there are several new ones.  I probably will not be posting very many pictures from the bike trip until it is over and I have enough bandwidth to upload them.

We hope you are all doing well,

Stephen and Linda

We hope you are all doing well.