Touring Amsterdam

 While in Amsterdam seeing the Anne Frank House is a must. 

Getting tickets does take some fore thought. You typically have to book tickets in the high season on the day they are released. About 1 million people yearly go through the house. It actually was not the family house but rather the business her father worked at. There was a front house and a back house area connected by the first to floors. The 3rd and 4th floors were separate structures.  The first floor of that spanned between both buildings was essentially shipping and warehousing of the bottled pectin the company sold. The second floor was where the business offices were with a hidden staircase to the upper floors. It was hidden behind a hinged bookcase that was filled with business records. The Franks and four others hid for about 25 months successfully. Unfortunately in August of 1944 they were found out. It is still not known how the Nazis discovered the hiding place. Sadly Otto Frank is the only one of the eight to survive. Anne’s diary survived because one of the women from the office went through the hiding place after the Germans took the family away and collected and hid the family’s personal items left by the Germans. Sadly the family was sent to the Auschwitz on the last train to leave the Netherlands. No photos are allowed in side the building so no real pictures of the inside to show.

So something we have noticed in Europe is ketchup is given our quite sparingly. At McDonalds in Switzerland we asked for Ketchup with our hamburger and fries and found we paid $0.35 for one packet of Ketchup. (Amsterdam was 1.30 for two packets) Restaurants typically give you a small bowel with about 2 tablespoons of ketchup. Well last night we were shocked when this 1 quart bottle of Ketchup was dropped off before out meal came. 

It may not be easy to see but the houses in this photo are all leaning slightly to the right. Especially the reddish one sixth in from the left edge. They call them drunken houses. Well the actual problem was they used wooden(untreated) beams as the foundations. As the wood rotted the buildings began leaning. I think these were worse likely due to softer soil??

We walked to the Amstel river. It is the origin of two notable things. First as people started to settle the area they made a dam on the Amstel river which led to the city name Amstel-dam or Amsterdam. It is also the water used for Amstel beer. We did find a few draw bridges like this that still are functional.

This is something I have never seen before. It is a Bicycle parking ramp. At the Amsterdam central train station. Just a hint of the number of bicycles here. 

Today we are headed to Bruges Belgium. Touring the town for two days and then we start cycling. The weather has turned cooler actually more normal seasonal. More exploring ahead.

Dale and Ila