A Day of Contrasts in Amsterdam

 I wanted to have an easy day to start off our Amsterdam trip, especially since we had a concert at night. Of, course working out a schedule with days closed for one thing and not for the other, I had to work around all of that.

So, for our 1^st day of sightseeing, we went to the Oude Kerk (Old Church), from 1306. This is a church but also used for various exhibits. Today there was an exhibit on change using fabrics and other mediums.

A grave from the 1500's

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oude_Kerk_(Amsterdam)

The church itself is very plain as much was destroyed by the Calvinists when they got some power, isn’t that the way it is with religions? One gets in power, doesn’t matter which one and there you go. Anyway, much was destroyed but the ceiling was spared as it was too high to reach. The ceiling is a beautiful wood, painted in some places. I’ve never seen such a beautiful simple wood ceiling before.

The ceiling and floor display is visible. The floor display is a paper with drawing under water.

The old organ

It was really exciting to find Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife’s, grave. I now am determined to learn more about her.

Saskia's grave

The church is located in what is now the Red-Light District. As we walked thru the district, we did see some women sitting in the windows. But we had to wonder if they were happy with their professions, about the exploitation of women and girls, and where we stood. I had to think of the song in Les Mis “Lovely Ladies” …

“…. Easy money
Lying on a bed
Just as well they never see
The hate that's in your head….”

Also, we understand how prudish we still are in the US. It gave us a time to question what we think and why. And I don’t know what I’d do if in that person’s situation. And yes, yes, I can hear some people I know; I would/wouldn’t blab, blab, blab. But guess what, we don’t know what we’d do. But these women are safe and protected by their government and there you have it.

We went on to find some lunch and walked down to a market that I’d read about. The market is a street market going down about 4 blocks. We did find some olives but most everything either I couldn’t eat or it was stuff I wouldn’t buy for anything.

We went back to the soup place but they were about out of soups and we could only buy 1 small container. We went back to our room and split the soup, ate olives and drank a little wine.

We had a concert, Beethoven’s 4^th Piano Concerto, at the Concert Hall in the evening. Dale and I love Beethoven! So, this was a dream come true. We walked down to the concert hall, about ½ hours walk. Since our tickets did not arrive via email we had to go inside. I showed the email that was sent without tickets and was ready to show the credit card payment but they found our tickets. We proved our Covid vaccines and off we went. We collected our champagne and lite snacks, found our seats and were happy.

Inside the concert

The concert was amazing. The pianist wasn’t as dramatic or theatrical as some but he played from his heart. This we appreciated as, to us the drama and theater takes away from the music.

What a day of contrasts.