One of the first things we did upon arriving in Amsterdam was visit the Anne Frank House. It was a very moving experience and like the guide at the museum said, there were a lot of "Anne Franks", so many stories of people who went through similar and terrible things during WWII. We heard a short lecture then toured the house that two families and one other man hid in for two years before being caught and sent to concentration camps.
The family hid in this house that was behind their business (they had former employees running the business and bringing them food.)
The next day we toured Amsterdam all day and had a wonderful time. Our first stop was the Rijksmuseum, which I LOVED. I took a lot of pictures and am going to try to figure out how to share them in a slide show - less scrolling! Hopefully I can get that posted soon. We got to see the special Rembrandt exhibit too. Everything we saw there was incredible and I thoroughly enjoyed it all.
Next a canal ride! I loved this too! Our guide told us a lot of interesting facts about Amsterdam, such as a large percentage of the people are under 30 and about half the population are single. It takes years on a waiting list to rent an apartment in the city, and there are probably more bikes than people!
We loved the architecture and the old houses along the canal, and you'll notice house boats in these pictures too, that people also live in.
She told us that some of the houses, built a long time ago on wooden foundations are starting to lean. She said they call them dancing houses. They go in and try to reinforce the foundations but some houses still lean into each other.
Dancing houses above and house boats below
You think you have trouble remembering where you parked your car? I'm not at all sure I would remember where I parked my bike!
The flower market. We were there during tulip season! More on that later :)
Rembrandt statue
We had a wonderful lunch at a Dutch restaurant - delicious and visited the Museum Van Loon, which was one of the old houses with a lot of original furniture and beautiful gardens. It was my daughter Michelle's birthday so we called her from the gardens at Van Loon 😁
A lot of their bikes can carry multiple people and we only saw one person (a child) wearing a helmet the whole time we were there.
We had to try Frites! They serve them with mayonnaise. They were so good, we ate them more than once :)
Garden at Museum Van Loon
I love this painting - what sweet little girls - and that is quite a hat!
A genealogy chart made up of Coats of Arms - interesting!
GREAT DAY!
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