I can't say that I didn't have some prejudices against Amsterdam before heading there. I was expecting the streets to be lined with prostitutes with clouds of smoke floating out of coffee shops that inhabited every other store front. I spent the 50 minute plane ride trying to mentally prepare myself for public debauchery and seedy, unsavory characters. Yet when I arrived, my preconceived notions floated away on those hypothetical clouds of smoke and I fell in love with the city.
Ahh, to pick a favorite part...it's just too hard. Well, first of all, the city was all around charming. Every block I walked down, I would pick out a new favorite house that I wanted to move into. The architecture is full of quirks: all the buildings are crooked since the city was built on marsh land. Even funnier, external pulley systems are used to haul furniture up the side of a house to an upper story since the houses are so narrow and the staircases are difficult to maneuver. I had visions of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny trying to get a piano up there...the whole concept seemed a bit goofy, but hey, it's worked for a few centuries!
What really made our experience unique was our choice of room and board...we stayed on a docked boathouse next to the Nemo Museum! Although our room was the size of a shoebox...
...the owner couldn't have been more pleasant or inviting. We spent our evenings on the top deck playing cards and devouring kruidnoten, Dutch gingerbread made especially for Sinter Klaus. At breakfast every morning, we sat cafeteria style and conversed with the other guests on the boat, particularly befriending an elderly gentleman from Australia who was an avid poet. Gotta love the people you meet traveling.
To try and attempt to verbalize my experience in the Anne Frank House would nowhere near capture the impact it had on me. Quotes from the journal were placed sporadically around the house, as if Anne was there whispering them as you wander through. My bones felt as cold as if the blood surrounding them had been refrigerated, and no matter my attempt to prevent the tears from welling, they still managed to drip down my face. Touching the magazines clippings Anne herself had selected to decorate her miniscule room, I felt like I was looking through a little peephole observing what life was like in the Annex.
Then there's the cheese. The waffles. The tulips. All the things that Holland is known for. Can't say I didn't indulge...
Next entry I'll inform you of how I rocked the kasbah in Morocco...
Ahh, to pick a favorite part...it's just too hard. Well, first of all, the city was all around charming. Every block I walked down, I would pick out a new favorite house that I wanted to move into. The architecture is full of quirks: all the buildings are crooked since the city was built on marsh land. Even funnier, external pulley systems are used to haul furniture up the side of a house to an upper story since the houses are so narrow and the staircases are difficult to maneuver. I had visions of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny trying to get a piano up there...the whole concept seemed a bit goofy, but hey, it's worked for a few centuries!
To try and attempt to verbalize my experience in the Anne Frank House would nowhere near capture the impact it had on me. Quotes from the journal were placed sporadically around the house, as if Anne was there whispering them as you wander through. My bones felt as cold as if the blood surrounding them had been refrigerated, and no matter my attempt to prevent the tears from welling, they still managed to drip down my face. Touching the magazines clippings Anne herself had selected to decorate her miniscule room, I felt like I was looking through a little peephole observing what life was like in the Annex.
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