Day One - Amsterdam - October 2025

On Friday, October 17, we flew from Birmingham to Houston ...and then from Houston to Amsterdam. Those overnight flights are tough!! We arrived in Amsterdam at 9:20 am on Saturday, October 18 and after we went through customs and grabbed our luggage, a lovely driver was waiting for us in the airport and we were whisked into a waiting Mercedes van and driven to our Barbizon Palace Hotel. We assumed we would be leaving our luggage and wandering around town or waiting in the lobby until our room was ready, but...unbelievably...our room was ready! We grabbed a glass of water and followed our luggage to our room. We promptly set a 30 minute alarm and took a quick snooze. Mark did NOT want to get up, but I finally convinced him to get up. We had 2:00 pm tickets to Our Lord in the Attic museum. Mark kept calling it "The Church in the Attic." You can read about it Here.. We had a map and the concierge had said go left and left ...but we almost gave up because we were so tired and our map was labeled in Dutch ...but we finally found the building just a few minutes past 2. Whew!!

The minute we left the hotel, we saw cool canals immediately. We saw thousands of bicycles. There are 900,000 residents in Amsterdam and a million and a half bicycles. The saying is, "If you hear the bell, it is too late."

We most often travel with a group of friends so we had to figure out how to take photos of each other! A co-worker showed me how to use the timer on my phone which makes selfies look somewhat better!

Let me tell you a little about Our Lord in the Attic where we saw some really old things. The downstairs floors were homes and the churches were hidden in the top floors. This was during a time when Catholics were not allowed to worship openly so they had "hidden" churches all over Amsterdam.

It amazes me how old things are in other countries. Below are the robes from one of the priests.

For the musicians reading my blog - below is the organ. If you zoom in, you will recognize some words even though they are not in English.

The ceiling in the worship space was lovely!

Isn't it amazing that this whole church was hidden away in the upstairs portions of a building!!

We rented a small device and ear pieces to act as our guide. When you entered a room, you scanned a QR code to hear about the rooms. Then you could listen to info about the families or the art. It was fascinating.

These stairs are original to the house dating back to the 1600's. They evidently had tiny feet. There were sooooo many steps. The houses on the canal were taxed by frontage measurements so most are 15 feet wide and then 30+ feet deep and multiple stories tall.

The piece of furniture below was really cool. The story of the Prodigal Son/Loving Father was painted in each of the squares. The people in the paintings were obviously Dutch which lent even more depth to the story.

These room below had all of these symmetrical features. One example was how the ceiling matched up with the floor pattern. There was also a fake door on one side of the room to make it symmetrical!!

Below is a part of the tiny kitchen.

These kitchen tiles are original to the house. One set showcases tiny animals of all kinds.

The tiles behind Mark showcased tiny people.

We walked back to the hotel - and after our crazy walk-around to find the museum, we had realized that the museum was actually very close to the hotel! I think we rested a minute - maybe!

We then headed back out to a Pub near the hotel.

Mark loves dark beer. They had dark beer and he was happy.

He ordered a beer immediately.

The Pub was tiny and intimate- we loved it! We ordered what we thought was homemade Guacamole...but instead it was homemade hot mulled wine! The hot mulled wine was tasty.

The girls behind Mark were playing cards. We assumed they were local folks since it was Saturday.

We ordered fries - which they LOVE in Amsterdam! There were places that served JUST french fries. They serve them with a mayo based sauce, which was actually tasty.

A group of people were sitting right behind me (and we were very close) and one of the men and I started talking. They were from Australia and he sounded JUST like Crocodile Dundee. He loved listening to me talk with my southern drawl.

Our "friends" we met in the Houston airport had told us to eat at Loetje (Lucha) so after a quick trip back to the room, we realized we needed to eat dinner so we walked across the canal and found it!

I don't look like I haven't slept in 36 hours, do I? (besides a 30 minute nap) - Looked again -- yes, yes I do! haha!

The city of Amsterdam was gorgeous at night!! This photo (below) is looking back toward our hotel and the church that was located next door.

The restaurant was located in the white building in front of the train station.

Mark ordered a filet and I ordered a burger - I ate the meat and cheese and lettuce and tomato. Supposedly this is a Dutch chain restaurant, but it did not feel like a chain nor did the food taste like it was prepared in the kitchen of a chain. The restaurant was PACKED and the food was tasty! At this point, we were so very tired.

We crashed and burned and got up the next morning ready to roll with our group! Many more posts to come. If you want to know anything about Amsterdam, River Cruises down the Rhine, Amawaterways, the food, the people we met - let me know and I'll try to include. I don't know which days I will write these posts . . .but I have a lot to share. (If you get bored, that is ok -- I'm writing these so that when I'm old, I can remember what we did!!)