Well, today turned out to be kind of a bust. Not entirely, it just wasn’t the day I had been hoping for. It was another gray day but I wasn’t going to let that derail my plans. I ended up spending a little time in the village of Broek in Waterland, visiting a hidden church, and eating my way through Amsterdam.
I spent a lazy morning getting ready and had another yogurt in my room for breakfast. I love going out to breakfast, but nothing here opens very early so I’ve been resigned to boring breakfasts several times now. I stopped at the Illy Caffè across from Centraal Station and had a hot chocolate while I did some people watching.
Then I crossed the street to Centraal Station and boarded the bus to Broek in Waterland. Broek in Waterland was the village I first saw pictures of that made me want to visit the Waterland area. I knew visiting Edam, Volendam, and Marken would likely take a full day and I didn’t want to try to squeeze another village into the same day. I had planned to bike to Broek in Waterland but the dreary weather had me catching the bus there instead. The main road divides the village into two parts, with a passageway underneath connecting the two sides. I started on the south side of the village, where the bus dropped me off. As I walked, I kept assuming that the north side must be the more picturesque side. And it is, it just isn’t as picturesque as I imagined it would be. I walked up and down all the streets and alleys but nothing really wowed me. I mean, it was pretty, and sun probably would have helped, but I was done after an hour. The pancake restaurant I wanted to eat at in Broek in Waterland didn’t open until noon and it was only 11AM. Since I didn’t want to wander around for another hour, I decided to go back to Amsterdam and get my Dutch pancake there.
I stopped at my hotel for a minute and then walked over to the Pancake Bakery, housed on the lower level of an old 17th century warehouse once owned by the Dutch East India Company. The inside was dark and dimly lit with tons of character. My apple pancake was a plate-sized traditional Dutch style pancake, like a crepe, with the apples baked right in. The Dutch syrup (schenkstroop) in original and caramel flavors made a nice addition to the pancake. I kept going back and forth and putting on a little of each before finally settling on the caramel as my favorite.
I walked from the Pancake Bakery over to the one museum on my list that I hadn’t seen yet: Our Lord in the Attic. If it sounds like an intriguing place, it is. Our Lord in the Attic is a hidden Catholic church that was used in the 1600s when Protestants had taken over Amsterdam and Catholics weren’t allowed to worship publicly. From the outside, it is an unassuming canal house. But the inside tells a different story. The top three floors of the home were converted by wealthy merchant Jan Hartman into a hidden 300-seat Catholic house church. Today, the church has been turned into a museum. You can visit the rooms of the canal houses on the bottom floors as well as the well-preserved church on the upper floors. It was quite impressive to visit and you would never know from the outside that there was a church there.
I spent some time back at my hotel just editing pictures this afternoon. Dinner tonight was at Café Bern, a cozy restaurant known for their cheese fondue and steak entrecôte. Since reservations were booked for tonight I settled for a seat at the end of the bar. I really wanted fondue but the bartender convinced me it would be too much food if I ordered that plus the entrecôte. So steak it was. It came with bread and a salad, but the real highlight is cooking the steak yourself at your table. The steak is just seared in the kitchen and then served pretty much raw with a sauce over an oven flame. You decide how long you want to cook it. It was fun to try and the sauce was outstanding.
I ended my night by stopping at L’Amour Bakery which I walked by several times in the last few days. I got a Belgian waffle with white chocolate and Biscoff and it was the perfect after dinner treat.
Traveling with Laura 