Day 3 – Amsterdam

 



Day 3 – Amsterdam

Today was another full day in town.  Toured both the new church and the old church.  The “new” church is really less than 100 years newer than the “old” church.  The old church has a world renowned organ, in the photo, and has multiple enclosed pews.  It is used as an art venue and appears to no long host services.  The new church is massive with a long nave and extensive choir.  Much of the nave is torn up as they rebuild the supports for the columns.  They are also doing archeological work as they exhume many bodies of those buried in past millennia.  An interesting fact is that when parishioners paid for a burial spot in the church floor, they paid for a limited (25 year) duration, after which the bodies were removed to an outdoor burial site to make way for current deceased.  From 1200 to 1865 over 60,000 bodies were buried in the church.







 We grabbed a light lunch from a grocery and then took the tram to “Lovers” canal cruise center for a one-hour cruise through some of the many canals.  It was fun with interesting narration and an amazing demonstration of boat maneuvering.  This canal boat was only slightly shorter than the width of canals at junctions, so the captain turned the boat literally “on a dime” with only a few meters to spare.  While we had already walked many of the canals that we floated through, the difference in perspective was instructive.  The flowery bicycle in the photo was on the bank of a canal, exemplifying the place of bicycles in the town’s psyche.

To finish off the day, we took a free ferry across the harbor to the A’DAM tower, which offered views across most of the city.  From high up, it looks very much like other older cities with lots of low buildings and narrow, un-geometric streets.  Only buildings on the city outskirts exceeding the height of the churches.  An early dinner brought us home to crash – still under the burden of jet lag.

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