Amsterdam: Day 2

by Céleste | February 12, 2015

Hopefully you’re a bit more acquainted with Amsterdam from our first post, so I’m just going to jump right in with the second day! Fair warning, we did a lot this day, so this is a long post.

Begijnhof

We started the day off early (around 9) with a trip to the Begijnhof, which is a little courtyard in the middle of some typical Amsterdam buildings. It’s interesting to try to find, because it’s really just a red door that quietly says “Begijnhof” on it, which you can just open up and enter. Fleur had warned us that it’s quite inconspicuous, so luckily we were able to find it.

The neighborhood used to be a place for nuns and religious women only, and apparently to this day, only women live there. I can appreciate that. It’s very quiet, and peaceful, so it was a nice way to start the day.

Dam Square

Next, we headed to Dam Square, which is a sort of town square containing the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), Royal Palace, and several other big buildings. I’ll describe the New Church and Royal Palace below. It was fun to walk around and see street performers and huge tour groups. There was also construction being done, so this involved a lot of walking around construction sites to get where we were going.

Oude Kerk

Oude Kerk means Old Church in Dutch. We stopped in to check it out briefly. One surprising thing to us was that most of the churches charged money to go inside. We thought this might be because these churches no longer have services, though we’re not certain. A lot of the churches and museums charged between 10 and 15 euros to see them! It was crazy. That’s why we were so happy to have the museumkaart to get in for free.

The Old Church had a big wooden ceiling that looked like the underside of a boat. There was also a weird modern art exhibit, which apparently is common in the Old and New Churches. It was kind of scary, with disembodied voices and people’s faces projected on the walls.

Our Lord in the Attic

We did quite a bit the second day we were in Amsterdam, including stopping at Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic). This is a secret Catholic Church literally hidden in the attic of three canal houses. It was a fascinating and informative tour, including the main house, which opens up into the chapel on the third floor. During the 1600s, Catholicism was outlawed in Amsterdam, so people built clandestine churches to continue their worship privately and in secret. The house has been open as a museum since the 1800s, and is a really interesting piece of the history of the city.

The museum is very well-preserved, and they even give some information about how they’ve accomplished this. It was probably one of my favorite museums we saw there. As you can see in the first photo, it’s just a normal-looking house on the outside. The second and third photos show the chapel inside. Ingenious!

If you see photos of people looking like they are talking on their cell phones, these were little audioguides available in many of the museums. They were easy to use, just point at the remote base in each room to hear the descriptions. This museum had one of the best.

De Waag

We ate lunch at a restaurant inside De Waag, “the weigh house,” which wikipedia tells me is the oldest non-religious building in Amsterdam. It’s from the 1500s! We had some delicious food and mint tea there. Vincent had eggs benedict, while I had veal croquettes (trying to be adventurous!) It was good, and warm on such a cold day. We definitely took our time, as it was very laid-back and cozy. They also had free wifi, which was nice because our French cell service doesn’t work outside of France.

Nieuwe Kerk

Next up was the Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church. See how that works? It was free for us with our museumkaart, but they charged 3 euros extra to see an exhibition of African masks. The museums in Amsterdam are ridiculously expensive, so get the museumkaart.

The masks were very interesting and beautiful, though I couldn’t help but dwell on the Dutch history of colonialism, and how this exhibition fits into that history.

Royal Palace

The Netherlands has a royal family, the current king being Willem-Alexander. The former queen Beatrix abdicated in favor of her son in 2013. Vincent and I spent our honeymoon in Aruba, a constituent country of the Netherlands, and the airport there is called Queen Beatrix Airport. (PS Go to Aruba, it is awesome).

The Royal Palace was once a town hall, turned into a palace by Louis Napoleon (Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother), who was in charge of the Netherlands at the time. The rooms are of course lavishly decorated, and beautiful. We listened to an interesting audio tour as well. It went into some fascinating details about the court of justice and the executions.

If you’re wondering about the crying babies with the skull, that’s from the execution room, I think where the people waited before being executed? I can’t remember, but it was cool.

Nieuwmarkt

We briefly walked around the Nieuwmarkt (New Market, good guess). This is a square where people set up a farmer’s market and food stands. It was just closing down for the day, however, so I’ll write about it again on the day we actually saw it in action.

Magna Plaza

This is a mall in a really beautiful building, the former post office. We just walked in and out to warm up a bit. They did have a store called something like “American Vintage” or “American Fashion,” and in the window they had college-style sweatshirts that said North Dakota and Minnesota! I couldn’t believe it. It must have been a sign.

Melly’s Cookie Bar

We stopped in for some coffee and alfajores at Melly’s Cookie Bar. They were similar to macaroons, as they were little round pastries. Wikipedia says they are from Spain. Well, they were new to us!

Canal Tour

To end our long day, we took a tour of the city in a boat on the canal. We took an evening tour, at 7pm, so it was dark, but everything was lit up. It was nice to take this tour so early in our stay, because it gave us a good idea of what to do and where everything was. Our tour guide was kind of sassy, and made jokes about everything, including about tourists. I liked him a lot.

We got to see all the Amsterdam sights from a unique angle, being low in the water. We also got to see and learn about the houseboats that sit in the river. I can’t imagine having a house boat and having tours drive by you all day. We could see into people’s windows! Vincent wants a houseboat now, by the way.

I know the photos are difficult to see, it was really dark! Don’t worry though, we see all these things during the day too, so we’ll write about them in later posts!

Kantjil & de Tijger

For dinner, we ate a Kantjil & de Tijger, Indonesian food! We had heard that Amsterdam had a lot of Indonesian food, and this restaurant was mentioned in my guidebook. It was really delicious, with lots of choices of rijsttafel, which is a bunch of Indonesian dishes served together. We chose 3 or 4 dishes, as well as rice, and enjoyed all of it. Unfortunately, the only photo I have of the food is really dark, so you’ll just have to believe me! We had spicy beef, coconut green beans, chicken, and spicy rice. Yum!