Day 5, 17 June 2014, Amsterdam - The "Eventual" Tram, The Zoo, Waterlooplein Flea Market, Rembrandt Huis Museum, Our Lord in the Attic, The Oude Kerk, The Girls in the Windows (of the Red Light District), The Flower Market on the Singel, Cruise along the Canals, The Shopping Street and, ta da! - an early night.

First off, let me just say... Never trust a tram line that heads off your map... and then appears on the other side of the map. One could assume it's a loop (and one did) - thinking it would eventually take one to Amsterdam Zoo. Strictly speaking it did - eventually. I jumped on the No. 14 making all sorts of assumptions and still half asleep - so it was actually quite pleasant to take a ride to the end of the line and back to my initial stop over the course of an hour. I can now reliably report that Amsterdam has many migrant communities and loads of ugly blocks of flats. Once back at my original stop, the No. 14 did continue on it's merry way all the way in the other direction... and to the Zoo (and that part of the trip only took 15 minutes). I really should have known better, but this will be the last zoo I ever, ever visit (unless they have something seriously unusual - like the pandas we saw together in Edinburgh). Utterly depressing places. Suspect the lions are taking medication to chirp themselves up a bit given the lack of lunch-on-the-run. Anyway - on a positive note, having taken a while to get there, I didn't waste much time seeing the place. Straight on to the flea market at Waterlooplein. Which cleared up quite a conundrum. On my way to the tram this morning I saw a man riding a bike without a seat - very carefully. When I got to the flea market, there were a couple of stalls selling bicycle seats. And they weren't all brand new. Chances are he was cycling (carefully) to the market to buy back his own seat. I fetched up at the Rembrandt Huis museum which the great master artist bought for 14,000 odd guilders in his hey day. Unfortunately though he lived and painted there for a few years, he never got around to paying off his large mortgage and eventually lost the home on the canal to bankruptcy. It's been restored incredibly - even has a massive oil by Rembrandt on loan from a museum in Antwerp. Quite uncanny walking through the rooms where he met his guests and sold paintings. In the room where he made prints off his etchings, an artist was explaining the process and showing us a print from start to finish using the linseed oil inks and handmade papers of the day. On to the top of the house, to his studio, there are canvases set up based on paintings from the day and another artist showing how everything was done by hand - pigments ground from minerals, canvases prepared - phenomenally labour intensive. Rembrandt was an avid collector of natural wonders from around the globe and his 'cabinet' room has been recreated based on the inventory at the time of his bankruptcy - 2 turtle shells, sea shells from around the globe, African spears and masks and classic marble busts from antiquity (which he and his students used as models for historical paintings) - see picture in album. A surprisingly interesting museum that I might not have gone to but for the Amsterdam Pass. Onwards and literally upwards to Our Lord in the Attic. This was a secret church built so that Catholics could worship in private after being declared persona non grata during the Reformation. Given it seated 150 people and would have been quite noisy on holy days, it wasn't such a huge secret... but out of sight out of mind was fine with the government of the day. Incredibly there really is no sign of it from the outside (see photo album), but inside it takes up the top 3 floors of 3 adjoining houses. A complete church right down to the confessional. Once St Nicholas's was underway in 1798 or so, they were actually going to close it down and restore it to a house - but some far-sighted folks managed to save it and turn it into a museum in 1888. Again - a bit of a surprising museum as churches go. Off to a real, live, nothing-secret-about-it church next - The Oude Kerk (remember the naming practicality - that would be The Old Church established in 1306). Massive, huge and the home of the pre-indulgence. This is the church right in the middle of the Red Light District. It's even where Saskia, Rembrandt's young wife, was buried - under tombstone No. 29. Of course it ended up getting a bit on the nose with 12,000 people buried in the floor - but it was a lucrative business and they didn't stop until 1866. Thankfully they've all been disinterred and the multi-level spaces under the 2,500 actual gravestones have been filled with sand. Back outside and into the real world of the district, I wandered through the back alleys heading to Dam Square with my eyes open this time and saw all the sex workers standing in their windows and peering out at the world. Quite strange. Not as strange as the sign on one window that said in really big letters "SEX" and in really small letters... "and Thai and Body Massage". Breathing fresh air deeply by the time I emerged from a lane full of "coffee" shops, I found a tram heading towards Muntplein and had a welcome stop for a late lunch (and a free cappucino - thank you Amsterdam Pass) at La Place. Then a peer into the Royal Delft Experience store... that blue & white china business is expensive - €39 for a little ornament the size of a thumb! Then moved into the flower market on the Singel Canal. There were definitely flowers for sale (€10 for a bunch of 50 tulips!) - but mainly bulbs by the 1000s, for every tulip imaginable. Popping out the other end, it was straight onto another tram and back to Centraal Station. Time to cruise the UNESCO World Heritage site that is Amsterdam's canals. Be aware that this was huge fun and I took far too many photos - houseboats, bridges, canal houses from the 1600s, more houseboats, more bridges, more canal houses (see today's picture). The hour cruised by quite quickly and given that it was 4.30 pm and all the museums are locked down by 5 pm, there was nothing for it but a stroll through the main shopping street of Amsterdam and a tram back to my eagle's nest of a hotel room. Nothing like a city pass to make an early night a thing of beauty!