Herengracht 88

Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you: the Herengracht 88.

I wanted to provide a few more pictures of the new home location for our church in Amsterdam... Particularly for those who can't drop by and see the place for themselves, I hope these photos will help to provide a little sense of connection with current developments in our church. It's pretty exciting stuff.

In the above picture, you can see the general setting of Herengracht 88 -- a beautiful canal-side location in central Amsterdam. The church space is located beneath the "Lieve" Belgian restaurant, in the brown building featured in the middle of the picture. Just next door to the Belgian restaurant (at the bottom of the gray building) is a pub called 't Arendsnest (The Eagle's Nest), and three doors in the other direction, at the corner (with the red awning), is a place called Cafe Baton. And in nice weather, the cafe uses the broad space in front of the canal (stretching for almost the entire length of the picture) as an outdoor terrace. So there should be no shortage of places for people from our community to hang out!



In the closer view above, the door to our facilities can be glimpsed directly behind the bicyclist, five steps down from the street (there's a red sign on the door, which you could also see in my close-up shot from yesterday). It's kind of funny that we'll be moving from an attic to a cellar! We've still got some work to do to figure out what we're going to call ourselves (since the name "Zolder50" means "Attic50")...



Herengracht 88 is located close to the intersection of the Herengracht and the Herenstraat. If you look on the map, you'll see that this is really an incredible location! We're only about 400 meters (a quarter of a mile) from the Dam (historic center of Amsterdam), and about 800 meters (half a mile) from Centraal Station. There are tons of unique shops and cafes and restaurants in the neighborhood...

We should be getting the keys and taking our first real look inside the place for the first time tomorrow (Thursday). I've actually been inside several times already -- and even once with a camera -- but we haven't really gotten to look around the place since the previous tenants have vacated the premises. I'll try to post more pictures and information and stories as I'm able. Please keep praying for our church during this period of transition!