While there are cars in
Amsterdam the 740,000 city residents pedal around on bikes or take trams to get around.but it seems like bikes dominate. You can't go down any street or alley or go over any canal bridge without practically tripping over a bike locked to a fence or pole. While you're avoiding these, at least a dozen bikes will whiz by you, the users pedalling madly over the cobblestones or transporting any type of good on a front or back bike rack, or on both ends. We saw more than a few
parents with children perched on the handlebars and great loads of books and boxes and other material carried along on the back of the bike. There is even a parking lot for about 9,000 bikes at the train station since commuters leave their bike at the station when they leave Amsterdam to work elsewhere. It turns out that at their destination they may have another bike that they use to go from the train station to the job. It was certainly eye opening to see so much day to day business carried on by bike. And it didn't look one bit like DC at all!
I can spend more than a few hours in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC searching out and staring at all the Madonna paintings and statues. Not only are they hundreds of years old and created by very famous Renaissance artists, but you just know that millions of people have also gazed on them and thought about the contents. Their colors and textures are extraordinary and you can't help wondering what woman and child or person sat and posed for the artist so he or she could create these icons. Of course, not everyone knows the stories of Advent and the birth of Jesus but of the several billion Christians in the world, I would hope that a few of us can gaze on these visual treats and have it enhance our faith. For others, at the least they can appreciate the art's antiquity and value or perhaps catch a glimmer of what they mean. I am very glad that one is allowed to take photos inside the Gallery as I now have my own images of these priceless works to use in a blog like this or to insert inside an email or print out for myself or whatever. With electronic text and images, there are miracles we can experience every day!
