If I remember correctly, I once again woke up at 2 AM. I think I drifted back to sleep better than the previous night, but I still woke up far earlier than I would like. Andy and Amy took off on their own side adventure to spend a couple of days in Paris. The rest of us started our day at the Rijksmuseum.
The building itself is amazing and then you add all of the artwork and artifacts it's almost overwhelming all there is to take in. Annie said that she wants to take a week long trip back to Amsterdam just to explore to museum. I think that would be the right pace to take it all in.
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| I love the realism in this painting. It looked more like a photograph than an oil painting. |
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| Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn |
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| Het Melkmeisje by Johannes Vermeer |
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| Fishing for Souls by Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne |
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| Stern carving from the Royal Charles |
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| Cuypers Library inside of the museum |
After the museum, we rented a car so we to do more sightseeing outside of Amsterdam. Our first stop was The Hague Netherlands Temple. Like many temples, it isn't actually located in the city it is named for. The temple is in Zoetermeer which translates to sweet lake. Now I have been to both the Salt Lake Temple and the Sweet Lake Temple.
We hoped back into the car and spent the afternoon in Delft. We had lunch in a cute square.
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| The schnitzel was fantastic! |
After lunch, we visited the Nieuwe Kerk or the new church.
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| De Nieuwe Kerk |
In Europe, new is a relative term. This is the second church in Delft and the construction for the "new" church started in the 1300s.
We didn't realize it before going inside, but William of Orange is buried the "Father of the Fatherland". This church is where his many of his royal descendants are buried.
The ticket to visit the new church included the old church. We wandered around the square in front of the new church and then made our way to the old church.
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| The City Hall is across the square from the new church. |
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| Over the centuries, the tower has burned in fire and struck by lightening. |
We stopped off at an antique store along the way to the old church. The store owner was very excited to find out that Chris spoke Dutch and the two talked.
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| We found a great photo-op along the way. |
We finally made it to the Oude Kerk.
As we were making our way back to the car, we saw a man park along a canal. We were all very impressed that he didn't fall into the water.
Our last stop of the day was to visit Kinderdijk to see a lot of windmills.
The road getting to and from Kinderdijk is very unusual. It looks like a one way street with bike lanes on either side of the road for cars.
It turns out, it is really a two way street for cars too. When a car comes in the opposite direction, both cars go into the bike lanes to safely pass each other. It was really weird!
After we got back to Amsterdam, I started packing since we were going to be staying Brugge, Belgium for the next few days.
That was day 3.
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