We made it to our first destination without a hitch. First, we ran into Kath at the airport in Mpls, which made waiting for the plane go quickly. The plane was on time, both of our seat movie screens worked (for once!), the train from the airport to Amsterdam was quick and fairly easy. We walked to our hotel, which is in a great central location. The man at reception took one look at us and our luggage and asked if we were just getting off of a cruise. He said he thought the two of us would lower the average age of the cruise ship as soon as we walked on it. :-) (This was a more pleasant comment than one I got in the street just a few minutes before!)
The Dutch know the importance of a comfortable bed, it seems. The room is, of course, small and has an open window without a screen, just calling to pigeons to visit us, but the beds! So soft! Nothing like the bed springs of Bifengxia last summer!
We walked over to the Anne Frank House this evening because it is open late and Rick Steves said the lines are shortest after 6 pm. Even with a small crowd, it took a while to look at everything because the items and spaces are obviously pretty small. It must be really crowded during peak times.
As I'm typing this, Ronaldo just scored for Portugal in the EuroCup. Just FYI for all you soccer fans.
Back to Anne Frank. Mark has never read the book, seen the movies or play (clearly he didn't go to public school because I think its still one of the most commonly taught 8th grade books), so he thought it was interesting from a historical point of view, but didn't get the "wow, this is the actual room" shivers. It's so sad to see the pencil marks on Mr and Mrs Frank's bedroom wall where they measured Anne and Margot's growth while living in the Annex. It reminds you of how young Anne was and how much of her life was spent in those rooms. Its also interesting that she revised her diary after having heard a radio broadcast that encouraged Dutch people to keep their letters and diaries for possible publication after the war. In the last gallery there was video of a recent raid and deportation by Dutch police of African immigrants suspected of possible crimes and the critical reaction of some Dutch people who pointed out the similarity to how the Germans treated the Jews with rounding them up based on their ethnicity rather than their individual actions.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a corner falafel and shwarma place and ate shwarma just like the Avengers. There we waited out a rainshower and returned to blog and rest up for another nice day in Amsterdam.