For our daily blog today, we started off with visiting a literal hidden gem within Amsterdam. This hidden church dubbed “Our Lord in our Attic” was made back when the Protestants had taken over the Netherlands and essentially outlawed religion but also it was allowed but they had to do so in private. We arrived at Our Lord in our Attic approximately around 10:15AM and got there by tram. The church was up in the attic and was used as a meeting point for many Catholics that lived within the Netherlands. The Netherlands in notorious for their open and accepting environment around many aspects and religion is not an exception. The church included all of the essential aspects of a normal sized church such as an altar, tabernacle, and even confessionals within the back of the church. This church is said to have held more than 150 people at a time and had so much decor implemented into it. However, just by the seemingly normal, boring facade you would never know what the interior held both in the physical and emotional sense.

After the Our Lady in our Attic tour and walkthrough, a group of us had decided to explore Amsterdam even more and traveled all the way to the outskirts before our trip of the Anne Frank House. We had gotten lunch at a local pancake palace, and I ordered the Nutella, Banana waffles and I have 5 witnesses that know I finished the pancake in sub 3 minutes. After our adventure to the pancake palace, we made our way to the Anne Frank house. The tour was emotional and very eye-opening. When learning about all of these experiences firsthand and seeing the actual place where she was in hiding was very emotional. The one lesson that I learned from today was the fact that mostly the rich Jewish families were the ones who went into hiding and others were not able to conjure the resources to fully go into hiding. Both of these museums stand for a higher tribute to the events that occurred in the past and serve to educate those later on of the aspects of the Netherlands culture that happened in the past.