Walk to Church

We got to our Amsterdam apartment Saturday evening and we realized a bit too late that the church was on the other side of town, and the train station to buy tickets was already closed SOOO we decided to go for a Sunday morning stroll. Taylor was still feeling sick and needed to sleep, so the three of us headed out for the FIVE MILE walk!

One thing that is hard about Amsterdam is the street names are impossible to say (Kloveniersburgwal, Sarphatistraat, Vijzelstraat) and the other thing is that one street changes to another and curves in an octagon around the center. We ended up finding the church just in time, and we got to see a lot of awesome sights along the way:

We loved seeing all of the bikes ALL over the streets. Amsterdam is the bicycling capital of Europe. Not only were they locked up everywhere, but we saw all sorts of people riding in the specified bike lane all over the city. We saw old couples riding to church, moms riding with kids on the back, dads riding with kids in wooden boxes in front. after two hours of walking, we wished we had a bike to ride!
This is Molen De Gooyer at Funenkade. It is more of a museum now as it is right close to downtown. We just happened to walk past it, along with a lot of awesome sights. We would turn a corner and realize we were somewhere important, even though we weren't sure where!

Below is the Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, where the royal weddings take place. It was cool to see this courtyard early on a Sunday morning before it was crowded with tourists.

Isabelle said of our walking experience, "I felt like a pioneer walking to church, I think mom is crazy for running 5 miles every morning. It felt like we would never get to church. I was thinking after we crossed the first canal that maybe we would get there after crossing 5 of them. Once we crossed over 10 canals, I thought maybe we would cross over 20, and that is exactly how many we crossed before getting there!"

We forgot to take any photos of the church building. It seemed very similar to any of the older church buildings in Utah, just smaller.

We were not the only english speakers at church so they had a translator with headphones for about half of the congregation. Isabelle wasn't so lucky with Primary "There were about 5 kids in all of primary and one of the teachers translated for her part of the time, but it was really hard to sing the songs in english while the people all around me were singing them in Dutch...ACHH" (That is her guteral sound heard in so many of the dutch words!!!)

The walk there took 2 hours and then after we walked about an hour to Centraal station and got the passes to use for the week! We had seriously TIRED FEET! Talk about a LONG Sunday!