Saturday

It’s been a relaxing day today; Being our last day we decided not to paint and besides we needed a break.  We have after all been painting every day and now it felt good to just play tourists and look around. Rick and I packed up our suitcases this morning more or less and decided afterwards to hike up the Westerkerk Tower with Carlie.  It’s a large church on Prinsengracht with a tall tower over looking the city.  They told us that the church actually does not own the tower, but that the city does.  They took control of it as a fire watchtower and a form of time keeping system.  They would ring the bells for the beginning of the workday and to signal the end of the day.  This is the church where Rembrandt was buried.  Well for his first few years, until the family could no longer pay the fee to keep him there.  Then the church exhumed the body and gave it back to the family!  Pardon me, but here is another bone!  Sounds all a little strange, but such is the workings of church finances.  I took a few pictures from the top anyways. 

We then rented some paddleboats and putted around the water for a bit.  That was a little bit of a challenge with the larger tour boats coming every few minutes.  They occupied most of the width of the canal.  At one section we were forced to cling to the wall as the thing maneuvered past us.  The tourists were most likely taking bets if we would be crushed or not. 

In the afternoon we walked to the train station to get our tickets for the ride to the airport tomorrow and checked out the old boats north of the station.  I was just thinking that we basically did the entire loop around the city and feel it now in the legs. 

We stopped off at a street bar on the walk back and had a couple of libations.  It made the walk back much easier.  Then it was out to a Thai restaurant. 

I worked on 24 paintings in two weeks basically, now its time to finish them up in the studio 

Tomorrow I am off to Sweden again, Karin will pick me up at the airport. 

Richard Boyer