Team JMCW Tour d' Europe
August 31st
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Team JMCW Tour d' Europe
August 31st
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Today was Museum Day for us! We bgan our day with the Rijksmuseum. This museum covers a variety of subjects
and history of Amsterdam. It was smaller than we expected, but full of unique and interesting pieces. Highly recommended!
On our way to the next museum we came upon a Stained Glass Shop. Here in Holland is the real thing - glass which
is stained. Jon was hoping to see some, since his parent's boat, the Pious Puffin, was built in Amsterdam and had several
stained glass windows. What was nice about seeing the shop, is that it contained both oude (old) and nieuwe (contemporary)
windows, but all using the staining technique.
We next visited the Sheepvaartmuseum. As far as we can tell, this is pronounced, "Shape fart"! :-)
This is the Maritime Museum, and was another step in hopefully retracing the origins of the Pious Puffin. This was the
largest, most complete and interesting museum we saw. Sadly, as it is a little further out from the main tourist areas
and perhaps because it deals only with the sea, there was hardly anyone there. Across the way, we found a series of
boats docked - some of which resembled the Pious Puffin, but none as elegent.
 At the museum we got a lead on the location of a nephew of the ship builder of the Puffin, who was still
building Yachts. We found the address, but he had moved and is apparantly not listed at the right address. We
also have the address of the original ship yard, but it was a bit too far to go. So, Jon took a long distance photo
of the area from across the river. There is no shipyard there today.
Then we capped off our day with a visit to the Sex Museum. We're hoping that this is more a comment on the contents
of the museum, rather than our own backgrounds - but frankly, we didn't see anything in the museum which we didn't already
know or have seen! :-) But it was interesting to see the history and evolution of our cultures and attitudes.
One last word of advice for others. We did a lot of training for cycling on this trip, but did not do a lot of
training for walking. So far, we've done considerably more walking than cycling, and MC has a couple of blisters - Jon
some pretty sore feet. Amsterdam does have public transportation systems. While we have not been using them -
I think we should recommend them to others. Even with that, central Amsterdam is a good city to walk in with its canals, brick
facades, brick & cobblestone streets and walkways, and very many people walking, biking, and sitting outside cafes and
taverns.
Oh, and did we mention that Amsterdam is currently in a heat wave? Its been in the high 80's and sunny every day
we've been here!
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