Today started with sleeping in. Felt amazing to get caught up on a bit of rest. Once up and around, we had a walk to meet the Kings near the Van Gogh museum. We grabbed a quick brunch across the street at Blushing Amsterdam. The food was really good and the place comfortable. The food and coffee would definitely get us ready for a lot of walking over a long day.

We entered the museum a little early through the group entrance for our guided tour. After chatting with the exceptionally personable security staff, we showed our bags and jackets in a locker and waited for our guide.

Normally we aren’t huge fans of art museums, but we were pretty upbeat about this one. When the guy walked up I was super excited. On our way in, I noticed a guy in a brown corduroy leisure suit and mentioned to Will that he should have one. Come to find out, that guy was about to be our guide. And you know what? He was awesome. Incredibly knowledgeable, personable, and he provided an interactive experience uniquely tailored just to us. We even went over by 30 minutes.

The museum is beautiful inside with Van Gogh’s work broken into categories and displayed on floors accordingly. We learned all about his life, how it impacted his work, and even how his contemporaries opinions made him who he is. A truly tragic story of loneliness and illness that ended in suicide. Walking away we were discussing whether his illness contributed to detracted from his mastery. We may never know.

Once our guide left, we wandered a bit longer. When we left the Van Gogh museum it was a bit of walk to our next stop.

We took a quick detour to see the Bloemenmarkt, or floating tulip market. A permanent fixture on one of the canals, this series of barges have been modified and become the go to place for tulip and other flower bulbs. It’s was packed with people and someplace we slowed a bit, but were anxious to keep moving.

Several centuries ago, Protestants effectively took over Amsterdam and removed Catholicism to the greatest extent possible. But they didn’t count on people’s desire to worship. And the concept of the hidden church was born.

Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder is perhaps the best preserved example of a Catholic noble converting part of his house into a church for others to come and privately embrace their faith. While this was a bit of an open secret, the threat of persecution was never zero.

In the case this church, three houses were purchased and the top floors gutted and turned into a complete church with an altar, organ, galleries, and sacristy. There was even an area for the priest to live. It was quite a remarkable construction project, yet it only took a year and was completely undetectable from outside. I’m sure that days of worship were a challenge to keep things quiet and out of sight, but it seems as though there was minimal danger.

What better way to honor Saint Nick than to walk from this hidden church, over the adjacent canal, and into Amsterdam’s famous Red Light District? We couldn’t think of one, so that’s exactly what we did.

Common misconception: the Red Light District is all about legal prostitution. It isn’t. While there is a lot of that, and quite a few stores, bars, and theaters dedicated to sex, there are also other establishments which are not involved in that industry.

Even though we were walking through at about 6pm, the streets were quite busy. Most of the red lit windows were empty, too early or too busy to advertise.

What we did notice was that the area was certainly drawing in a different type of crowd from what we had seen in other parts of the city. Strange right? Despite the connection to Saint Nick, it didn’t seem that anyone else had made the connection to leave the church for this place.

I think the Red Light district is an interesting curiosity. People see it as taboo when in reality it is simply a regulated and open version of something that happens in every city in the world. It is likely safer for all involved and keeps it from being more pervasive and problematic in other parts of the city.

Oh, and it was dirty. A total mess. So were many of the areas we saw bordering the Red Light district. Garbage everywhere. It makes sense why Amsterdam has asked people to stop coming here for stag parties and out of control partying. Not really a place most people would want to spend time, and this is coming from a guy who lives in Vegas.

That said, we will swing back through tomorrow night when it’s a bit later to see how it feels… I mean, don’t we have to?

Dinner tonight was at Seasons, a short walk from our Airbnb. By some small miracle we were able to make a reservation for 7:30 at 7:20. When we arrived, the place was packed and it stayed busy the two plus hours that we were there. The food was fantastic and we had a great time. We would all definitely recommend this place.

Another big day tomorrow touring the tulip fields and nice dinner to cap off the trip.