Bijbel Museum

Bijbel Museum

Day two and we are getting into this sleeping in caper. We are down in the dungeon of the hotel, the restaurant is above our heads! Yes we hear the scrape of chairs, and even better we are below street level. I feel like a below-stairs skivvy. We hear the drag of suitcases along the footpath at all times of the day and night. But last night, I crashed. Such a good sleep, I will forgive them for waking me this morning.

Best thing about Amsterdam is these guys really understand where they live and the market they are catering to. Most shops open from ten to twelve in the morning, so absolutely no need to hustle about to get out there. They stay open until ten at night or later, if you are off to XXX places.  So, even with our sleep in, we had a ton of time to visit our first museum before our tour started today.

Bijbel museum, I saw this online and couldn’t wait to visit it. They have a lot of old bibles and lots of artifacts from Egypt. They are beautiful, all the lovely calligraphy and illustrations. I love that you could (if you were famous and rich enough) order your own bible and say what maps and extra info you wanted included. Think I might put my order in. They have a self-guided audio tour for you to do, which lets you ramble around the building at your own pace and order...you know me, I can't do anything like that from stage one through to ten.  Fortunately, most of the information is provided in English as well as Dutch, but the one thing I really wanted to study, which was their very accurate models of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple - all the info was in Dutch, so that was a bit of a downer. Also, managed to wave my hands around and knock over the safety ropes, so feeling like a naughty kid, I tucked my hands behind my back and quietly slunk into the next room.  But it is housed in a gorgeous three storey building. Beautiful wooden staircases and also, there is an art exhibition, which focuses on how plants are used in the bible and how you can infer meaning from them. It was great. Can’t say I’ve given much more than the basic consideration to these aspects in the Bible. So my lucky students are going to have a bit of fun with this.