We really wish we had about another week here. Amsterdam is incredible. We had a great night’s sleep at our beautiful hotel and a fantastic breakfast there too. We took a taxi to a luggage drop near the city center, and then headed off on foot. It was a perfect day out and we just walked along the canals trying to see as much as we possibly could.
The architecture is so beautiful!
Everyone was out enjoying the perfect weather either on bicycle or by boat.
When we initially tried to get tickets for the Anne Frank house, they were completely sold out. Luckily, I kept checking over the last few weeks and was able to get the last four special educational program tickets for us. We were so glad because the line for stand-by visitors was unbelievably long.
This is the church with the bells that the Frank family could hear from the secret annex.
And here is the Anne Frank house…for over two years, eight people lived here secretly to escape the Nazi persecution. In the end, they were all arrested and and sent to concentration camps. Otto Frank, Anne’s father, was the only person out of the eight who survived the war.
No photography is allowed inside the house or the museum. Our special tickets allowed us to attend a thirty minute presentation about the history of the Frank family, the other people who also used the annex as their hiding place, and the brave people who helped them from the outside. We also learned a bit more about the history of WWII, Germany and the Netherlands as it related to the events that took place here. Here are a few pictures from that part of the tour.
This is a picture of Anne in her Montessori Kindergarten class. She is the girl with dark hair in the middle toward the back sitting on the chair. The majority of the children in this class photo died in concentration camps.
This is a diagram of the house and secret annex in the back.
This is a picture of Rotterdam after the German bombing. The Netherlands surrendered the following day and the Nazi occupation began.
And this might be the saddest picture of all. This is Otto Frank in the secret annex on the day the house was opened as a museum.
We all re-read the Diary of Anne Frank just before this trip and it was quite an experience to be there in person. It was also incredibly heartbreaking knowing the tragic outcome. Even though it was an extremely somber experience, we are all so glad we came and saw it for ourselves.
From here, we headed back to the central station and I am writing this from our train headed back to Paris. Amsterdam is one of my very favorite places in the world and I can’t wait to come back and spend more time here.
