Holland Part 3A: I am sterdam

(I want to thank God for a wonderful 8 hour conversation I had with a dearly missed person in my life this morning-afternoon...even though this does make the next month or so a bit harder now; it is definitely worth hearing the voice and seeing the face (yay Skype!) of this very special person!)
My time in the city of Amsterdam was both awesome and challenging. First, the scene to your left was ubiquitous but never ever boring (in fact, about 1/3 of my pictures are the down-the-canal shot, and I've probably doubled or tripled up on the same shot of some canals (unknowingly, of course) because I just didn't get enough!) I had four days of glorious sunshine in which to walk around and explore this easy-to-navigate-even-in-Dutch city. Although I couldn't say any of the street names, I was able to match them with the street signs (little blue placards the size of index cards they nail to sides of buildings, like most everywhere in Europe) and find my way around. I learned a bit more Dutch in the process: Broodjes means sandwhiches, daag means day (Maandaag = Monday), uur means hour, plein means square, gracht means canal, straat means street, huis means house, putting "en" at the end of things pluralizes a word, verse jus - orange jus (jus - juice) nooten = nuts, that sort of thing. Of course, these are mostly the obvious cognates because they even sort of look like the English word they translate to. Although everyone speaks English as well as Dutch (and German and French - all are required in primary school) in A'Dam, nearly all of the signs, directions, menus, etc. are in Dutch.

For me, it was easier to get around A'Dam by foot instead of taking the incredibly sophistocated tram system (but they do drive on the right side of the road - though, much to my surprise, it actually took some adjusting!), because I could follow myself on the map (even though it was in Dutch) instead of hopping on and off and having to find myself on the map again. A'Dam isn't that big of a city, and I actually even TRIED to get lost and couldn't. It is easily and enjoyably walkable.
Mostly, I wandered around, prayed, and took the advice of people who had lived for a long time on what to see. There was the Rembrandt House, where the famous artist lived and painted, the Van Gough Musuem - which, oddly, was only a floor of his stuff (but they did have Starry Night!!) and the rest was all inspirations of his and information about the artist. I saw the Anne Frank House, where Anne fled with her family from Germany during WW2 and wrote her famous diary. I found some beautiful parks and made streets for walking and praying, laying the grass and contemplating the clouds passing between the sun and me (so far, only one sunburn on the trip - and that was on my insane 11 mile walk from Saintfield to Downpatrick!). I found "The Dam" - a sort of city centre/square about a 45 second walk from the Centraal Station (where you catch the trains and trams to and from all over Holland) with a National Monument, a crazy-beautiful museum and lots of famous hotels, shops and tourist magnets.
A'Dam has a rather impressive 6 floor library with a wonderful gourmet cafe on the seventh floor. And, you enter through this automatic revolving door (it's always turning, you just have to hop in - and it's more than twice the size (the doors are twice the length) of any revolving door I've ever seen, so I wasn't terribly freaked out (like I usually am by these things). I hung out there for about three hours before catching my flight back to Belfast - they've got more than I knew what to do with, and most of things I poked around in were in Dutch. It was still a beautiful place with a beautiful view of the city from six stories up (and of the A'Dam aquarium, a huge blue building shaped sort of like the front half a whale and called "Nemo"!)