Day 4 - Amsterdam (15 Sept)

Had breakfast in the hotel at 7:00 AM. It was a really good buffet with bacon and eggs and lots of good breads, etc… Can’t wait for tomorrow’s breakfast! Left the hotel at 7:50 (walking briskly) to catch the 8:15 train into Amsterdam. The train was packed, so most of us had to stand for the 20 minute train ride.


We took a tram (like the Baltimore light rail) to Westermarkt, which is where the Anne Frank house is. This is a picture of the house (with the black doors). Anne's father's business was located in the downstairs part and the hiding place was on two floors hidden in the back behind a bookcase that opened. The bookcase is still there. We took a tour of the house and it was really good. It was so sad, though, to be in those rooms where those poor people had to live for two years and then to be standing on the street in front of the house where they were taken out on Aug 4, 1944, when the Gestapo came to get them. Of the 8 people in the house, 7 died in concentration camps. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen just one month before that camp was liberated. They still don’t know who tipped off the Gestapo that they were hiding there.


We then walked all around Amsterdam, looking at the canals and the palace, among other things. There are many “coffee shops” throughout the city where they don’t sell coffee, but they do sell marijuana! You have to smoke it in there. You can really smell it strongly when you walk by those places! And the people sitting in there look really out of it. Our tour guide said that they are allowed to have marijuana plants in their home, up to 5 per household.

There are public urinals out on the streets in Amsterdam. They are only about chest high and the lower part is open, too. We saw one guy using one and it is very wacky.

We had lunch at a place called La Place downtown. It had all sorts of fabulous food in sort of a cafeteria style. We got really good, thin-crusted pizza and some really fresh fruit. It was so good.

Next, we went to the Rijkmuseum and saw tons of Dutch art, including Rembrandts. There is a huge Rembrandt there called Night Watch, which is pretty famous. One guy, Steven, had finished up in the museum and walked around a little. He found the US Embassy and took a picture of it. He was detained by the embassy staff and had his passport checked out and was made to delete the picture! He is the most clean-cut all American looking boy around, so it was pretty funny that he had that run-in with the feds!

We took off walking again and took a canal cruise. That was really nice. We rode right past the Anne Frank house again. There are 100 canals in Amsterdam, over 50 miles of them. It’s a lot like Venice, only there are no gondolas, just regular boats and houseboats.

The houses in both Amsterdam and Haarlem are really skinny, but deep, because they were taxed by the amount of frontage on the houses. There are a couple houses that are about the width of a window. They are big windows, but still, these houses are narrow!

After the canal cruise, we walked through the red light district of Amsterdam. We were warned not to take pictures because they might smash your camera or come out and throw water on you. The water thing actually happened to a guy on one of our guide’s tours. He tried to hold his camera down at waist level and sneak a shot, but the girl saw and ran out and threw water on him. This was some kind of experience, can’t really describe it. Girls are actually sitting or standing in sort of like shop windows trying to drum up business. They are all dressed very scantily and some are actually standing right up against the glass! There were a few slim, attractive girls, but most were quite chunky and Gary was wondering what type of guy would patronize one of those girls. It felt weird seeing these girls, because they are sitting right there looking at you. Sort of like Kathleen’s description of looking at the world’s smallest woman at the state fair. Very awkward. And of course, lots of “coffee shops” in that area. One guy on the trip told us that there’s a mini red light district in Haarlem, so Gary had to check that out when we got back here later that evening. It was just the same, only smaller. He walked into a place and asked how much and then he said he didn’t understand what they said in reply but he thinks there was a five in there somewhere. I have to keep my eye on him tonight and make sure he doesn’t sneak back down there!

We came back to Haarlem at about 7:30 and had to eat dinner quickly so we could get somewhere by 8:00. We stopped in at this place called Inter Snacks. Some sort of Asian people were running it. I had fish burger and Gary had chicken burger. Not our greatest meal, but ok. Then we took a ten minute stroll through Haarlem’s red light district, where we saw one girl in the window and Gary went in one place and asked how much (as mentioned above). Then we went to the huge church in the square to an organ concert. This organ is extremely huge and old and was played by Mozart and Handel. The music was very nice and a lot of people turned out for the concert. It is right across from our hotel (the Ambassador). Most of the group went to the concert