Today was a big walking day – a walking tour into the Jordaan and the area around our hotel, and the a trek down to the Amsterdam outpost of the St Petersburg Hermitage Museum.

Our hotel runs walking tours led by the former concierge around the Jordaan neighbourhood across the canal and in the ‘Nine Streets’ precinct around the hotel. So we did that this morning, learning a bit more about the origins of Amsterdam, the history of the Jordaan neighbourhood (where the workers who built the canals were housed), and finished with a cheese and chocolate tasting and an insight into how the hotel we are in (spread across 20 canal houses in two streets was created.

After a short break we trekked down to the Amsterdam Hermitage museum to see a temporary exhibit of objects on loan from St Petersburg HQ (thanks Vlad) and their permanent exhibit about Holland in its Golden Age. The various objects on in the temporary exhibit were varied – ranging from gothic religious objects, islamic tiles and objects, imperial Russian furniture and ceramics of various kinds (the tsars starting with Catherine the Great collected anything and everything!); the paintings were a bit less interesting – after all you don’t loan your star attractions! The Dutch exhibit was really well done and tied together a lot of paintings from the period by lesser known artists with commentary that explained Dutch society at the time.

John’s cold (which came on as we left Italy and dogged him all the way through Iceland) sapped his energy levels a bit today so we only ventured across the canal for dinner to a cosy bistro for dinner. Less busy day planned for tomorrow.