We had one more attraction that we wanted to see that seemed to be generating long lines, the Anne Frank House, so we got going early in order to be there at about 8:30 for a 9:00 opening. We had noticed the day before that the lines seemed to be an hour to an hour and a half long, which seemed like an awfully long time to stand around waiting. When we got there, we found that we weren't the only ones with this idea and we were at a point in the line where a sign post said the wait would be about forty five minutes - ugh.
We stuck it out, and they must have opened early because we got in the door just after 9:00 which is what we were shooting for anyway. The visit was very interesting, with several audio visual interviews of a few of the survivors, a tour of the secret attic area, and several of the actual diary books written by Anne Frank. When we got out it looked like the line was at least 2 or 3 hours long, and the streets looked like it was a weekend with people visiting all sorts of sights. We were very glad we went early. One of the rule in the Anne Frank house is no photos. There is quite a bit about the Museum with pictures at the (Museum Website - Link).
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| On the way to Anne Frank House |
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| Near Anne Frank House |
While we were in the area, we stopped at the Westerkerk one of the city's old churches. It was a former Catholic Cathedral that had bee converted to a Calvinist church, which means they took a lot of things like statues, references to saints, and other ornaments out. It is possible to design a building to look very majestic and plain. When you take everything out of a building that was designed to be ornate, it just looks empty, like it is still under construction. As you can see from their website they do still have a very pretty tower.
We later made contact with a couple of the folks who will be riding with us on the Bike and Barge, Dick and Cheryl and had a chance to catch up and compare notes on what has been going on in our lives since we saw each other in 2012. They had just come in this morning from the US, so they still needed to get settled in the afternoon.
Linda and I headed to the Amsterdam Museum, which focuses on the history of Amsterdam. They do an interesting treatment of the subject, breaking it into several small bites rather than one overwhelming history. It was real nice, and we may go back.
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| Amsterdam Museum |
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| Money and Valuables Chests - Amsterdam Museum |
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| Amsterdam Museum |
All of these places were pretty close to our hotel, they are the yellow map pins on the map below. We did not want to get too far away as the forcast was for 50% chance of rain. It was a beautiful day, the warmest one so far, but it did rain after we were in for the night (the best time for rain).
View Amsterdam in a larger map
We hope you are all doing well,
Stephen and Linda
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