Yesterday was spent visiting some tourist spots that we had missed. We had a slew of museums on our list, but we also wanted to meet up with a friend of mine from Oslo.
As this was our last day in Amsterdam, it was obvious that we needed to get more frites. We stayed with with the classic knoofloksaus, but this time also with the joppiesaus. I learned that knoofloksaus is garlic based, but I still don’t know what was in the joppiesaus. Now professional frite eaters (friters?), we got a large. This may have been a little too much. We huddled around the warm and crispy potatoes, eating them while our umbrellas protected us and our loot from getting moistened by the rain.
With a little time to spare, we made our way to the Museum Our Lord in the Attic, which is a hidden church. That is to say, in the 17th century, when Catholicism (amongst other religions) were outlawed, people built hidden churches to practice their religions in secret. This church was not actually much of a secret, but was tolerated mostly because it’s attendees and founders were important businessmen.
It’s also worth noting that it was a lot bigger than it looks, as we found it hard to leave the building. When we thought we were done, there were several more rooms left. Only after another 10 to 15 minutes of audio tours were we allowed to escape.
My friend Tim is an Amsterdammer. He did part of his undergraduate with me at the University of Oslo. We met up for a coffee and a chat at the Quartier Putain, a literal coffee shop in the red light district. We learned that with the UK leaving the EU, there was a lot of fear that the Netherlands would go the same route. He said that should there be a referendum, it was highly likely that they would vote to leave the EU.
He contrasted the perceived tolerance that Amsterdam shows to tourists, with it’s attitudes towards drugs and prostitution, with a budding nationalist movement with a fear of immigrants.
From there, we said our goodbyes and took the tram to the Natura Artis Magistra, which is the zoo in the southeast. Around there there were a few museums that we were interested in: The Hollandsche Schouwburg (Holocaust Museum) and the Versetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum). Unfortunately, both were closed by the time we got there, so we instead opted to walk around the outside of the zoo. This offered us views of flamingos, alpacas, and various birds of paradise.
From there, we went to Brouwerij ‘t Ij, a brewery under a windmill. We grabbed a quick sampling of beers, and relaxed on the patio. After a bit, we moseyed to a nearby park where we watched crows, pigeons, doves, and herons compete for bread.
The sounds of a nearby protest drew us over to a National Slavery Commemoration. At one end of the park, a group of people wearing formal attire behind a speaker at a podium. At the other end, there was a crowd of protestors blowing whistles and noisemakers to try to detract from the event. Not having a clue what anybody was saying, we had to look it up later. Appears to have been a conflict with changing the day of the memorial.
We returned to our hostel, stopping for döner kebab along the way. By the time we made it back, it was dark. With a load of laundry running, we went off to explore an island park that is on our lake. A few last minute documents needed to be printed, but the evening ended early in anticipation of an early trip to the airport in the morning.
-Ray