Day 20: Flower Auction & Our Lady in the Attic

It was an early morning for the group today as we met out front of our apartment building at 6am local time (that's midnight for those keeping tabs back home) to visit Flora Holland, the massive flower auction through which over 50% of all flowers sold in the world each day flow. The building is roughly 775,000 square meters, making it the world's largest commercial building. That's like the size of 200 football fields!

The bidding follows the rules of Dutch-style auctioning. The bidding starts high and works its way down. The winning bidder pays the lowest price.

The building itself, the seemingly impossible logistics at work, and the massive number of flowers were unlike anything I've seen or experienced before. A fascinating tour, and one of the signature highlights of the trip.

Later in the afternoon, we visited Our Lord in the Attic, a secret church built by the Catholics in the 17th century. It was a secret at the time because Catholicism was banned in Amsterdam after the Protestants took over the city in the late 16th century. The church and, as of 1888, the museum were built in a space that combined 3 houses in the city's Red Light District. Our Lord in the Attic is Amsterdam's 2nd oldest museum after the Rijksmuseum, which was founded in 1808.

The church's priest had living quarters which included a very short bed confined essentially to a cabinet space in the wall. The reason behind having a bed so short for a man of average height? The priests in those days slept upright for fear of being taken by the Devil if they lied flat!

As for the maids living downstairs, their bathroom was one of Amsterdam's first. In the 17th century, no one had a "room" dedicated specifically to bathing, washing and relieving oneself. Needless to say, these lucky ladies had it made.

Throughout the building, there are paintings and references to St. Nicholas, the Christian saint whom we've come to associate with the Christmas season. Turns out that the Dutch don't envision exactly the same "jolly, old St. Nick" that Americans do. According to Dutch tradition, St. Nicholas is slender and strict, and he won't think twice to put a bundle of sticks in your shoe if you've been a bad kid! December 5th is when St. Nicholas's feast day is celebrated in The Netherlands, and this is when all the big presents come. December 25th, Christmas Day, is only for minor gifts. So imagine our Christmastime traditions flip-flopped with about 20 days' difference. That's the Holidays in The Netherlands. St. Nicholas is also the patron saint of Amsterdam.

I wasn't able to get a picture, but across the street from Our Lord in the Attic is a home that has a "clock facade", which is more ornate, complicated and much older than the usual square facades on most of Amsterdam's other houses. This one has two giant fish on it that look like ancient sea monsters but are really images of what the designer believed dolphins would look like.