Priceless

Bruce at the Archives - the valves and gauges belong to the old boiler system
(the archives are housed in a former bank building).

I'd signed up through Expedia for a "small group" walking tour, which, I've learned, can mean anything.

Today it meant that Bruce and I were the only clients of our tour guide Kaylee, an ex-pat American art history major from Denver, Colorado. We had a blast.

The oldest house in Amsterdam. Looks pretty good for 450 years old. 

We covered in two hours what normally takes three, so we spent the last hour hanging out in the world's greatest little neighbourhood pub in the old Jordaan section, where Kaylee showed us her Homer Simpson tattoo.

He's wearing his reading glasses.

Then, after a lunch the absolute opposite of the one we had yesterday, we checked out the City Archives.

The "Treasure Room" holds a changing show of different items from the massive archive collection. It is housed in the old safe deposit box vault, which was designed to be grand and bolster customer confidence in the bank.

Among the treasures were documents associated with the Dutch East India Company (or VOC as it was called) sealed with many different wax impressions.

And the world's thickest book - which, of course, was associated with the slave trade.

And, 485 years ago to the day (February 11) of our arrival in Amsterdam, a bunch of anabaptists ran naked through the streets, convinced that Judgement Day was upon us all. 

They were wrong about that for everyone else, but their demonstration proved to be the last thing they ever did.

Having our very own tour guide meant she could take us directly to things I'd read about but had no idea how to find (the names of things and streets are complicated in Amsterdam). Kaylee took us to a couple of protected gardens that I'd longed to find, but despaired of ever being able to, and helped us find the "Pink Triangle" memorial, which we had walked by at least twice, without knowing it was there.

Now that we have seen so many sights we are starting to get them mixed up in our heads, we're going to focus for our last day in Amsterdam on eating: rijsttaffel and sweets - probably in that order but not at the same place.

Thanks for reading!

Karen