After the zoo, it started getting cloudy, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in museums. First, we visited the Verzitsmuseum which is the one that tells the story of the Dutch Resistence during WWII. Then we went to the Amsterdam branch of The Hermitage, the famous Russian museum, where we saw an interesting exhibit on Eastern Orthodox Christianity that was the main religion in Russia until 1917 when the communists took over. Lenin called religion “the opiate of the masses” and sought to destroy it by knocking down the churches and murdering the priests. The communists were pretty successful doing this, but after the 1989 collapse of the USSR, religion again flourished.

We learned that around 380 A.D., christianity split into the Catholic Church in the west and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the east in Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey. That’s why the Russian and Turkish christian churches have minarets and look like mosques – they were from the same geographic region.

Sorry we don’t have pictures from the museums, but when we left and started walking home, it was raining and Dale pulled up her hood:

Some muslim girls stopped us and started chattering away at Dale, asking for directions. I think they thought she was muslim because of the hood and they wanted to know which direction Mecca was in so they could do their evening prayers.

Or, maybe not. But it makes for a good story.

On the way home, we walked through Rembrandt Park. Judging from the way Rembrandt was looking down at this musician, I think he approved of the Flamenco version of Stairway to Heaven that the guy was playing.