This attraction was not recommended by the app originally, but my local friend told me, that this is one thing she would strongly recommend to see.

Fortunately, it appeared to be super-close to the conference venue, and even though the conference has started already, I’ve asked Boris to find a session he can skip, and we went to see the church.

What is this church anyway? It was one of the many underground (although we should probably say – upground) Catholic churches which existed in Amsterdam at the time the Catholic churches were outlawed.

The building does not look like a church at all:

You might wonder, was it really possible that such a large institution would remain unnoticed and undiscovered. The audioguide says that it’s not like nobody knew what was going on – you just had to bribe the right person 🙂

I’ve made tons of pictures in this church, however, when I’ve started to go over them, I’ve realized that due to the size of the space most of the pictures do not give the right impression – they show only small fragments of the beauty!

Actually, it is one of the oldest museums in Amsterdam – the church was operating will 1887, and was reopened as a museum in 1888! It consists of three houses adjacent to each other, and the church itself occupies the two upper floors of all three buildings combined (if you understand, what I am trying to say :))

Beautiful museum! I could spend a whole day there, and actually, it required some effort on my side to leave it :). Starting from impressionists, followed by my most loved Chagall, Kandinsky, and Malevich.

There was a big group of Japanese tourists on the same boat, and they took the task of taking pictures very seriously. They were way more organized than us, so while several of them were standing on the stern and taking photographs, the messenger from the inside was periodically popping out and alerting them about upcoming attractions. It turned out; you do not need to understand the language to figure out that something is coming up.

Later I’ve returned to the cabin. At that time we were passing the habituated boats, where people live permanently, and some of them had hose plans in the pots displayed on the decks. It was hilarious that one of the ladies started to point at these plants: bonsai! Bonsai! I can’t tell for sure what her neighbor was replying to her, but looked like she was saying something to the effect: you are out of your mind! What kind of bonsai it could be?! But the first lady did not seem to be convinced :).

Several people have asked me, both in writing and in person, how did I manage to take pictures of Amsterdam with almost no people at sight. Especially because I’ve been saying that there are too many tourists.

Indeed, the city seems to be very crowded in the middle of summer. And in spite of the whole army of garbage tracks and janitors on the streets every morning, the city center only remains relatively clean for a couple of hours.

Yes, I could take tons of pictures of the garbage everywhere on the streets, of thousands and thousands of people in the city center, who make the said streets very difficult to walk on. But I didn’t see any point in it.

When we were walking down the streets of Amsterdam, I was trying to imagine how they looked at the time when young Peter the Great was visiting the city. For a person born in Saint Petersburg, visiting Amsterdam is like visiting living far-away grandparents and searching for your roots. You can’t stop from metally comparing the sights, the bridges, the overall feeling of the city. You can’t stop recalling the “new Holland” island in Saint Petersburg, and canals around it, which look exactly like in Amsterdam.

So yes, I was trying to capture even the most touristy places in a non- tourist mode.