Oct 25 -- Explore Amsterdam a Second Day

Anne Frank House outside
no photos allowed inside

We got up early and out the door to arrive at the Anne Frank House before 9am. I had thought I could order tickets online, but they were sold out of advance tickets until next Monday (oops!!) and the fastest way to get in is to get there before they open at 9am. This was complicated by my clock alarm totally resetting itself inside my suitcase and me not verifying before crashing last night. Luckily, we awoke by 7 and were in line by 8:30. This was facilitated by having a breakfast of the raspberry danish we got in  Ribe and an orange. The room has a nespresso machine but  no directions, and I was unable to decode coffee or tea. So much for my tech cred!

By 8:30 there were already 30-40 people ahead of us. Jim is not good at lines, and we were lucky that a charming local woman and her 10-year old son were right behind us and we somehow got engaged in conversation. We learned that all the museum traffic we saw yesterday was due to a school holiday, so people are taking their kids everywhere. The house itself was larger than I imagined from reading the book and on 2 primary levels plus an attic. Of course, I haven't read the book in a few years, but being inside with the blackout windows and imagining me or worse, kids, cooped up here for a couple years was quite a moving experience. After we went thru the hiding place, we exiting into an area that presented real life current moral questions and gave the viewers a chance to vote and then displayed the results. One situation was about headscarves being banned from public schools because they are religious symbols and it presented a very even discussion of the reasons for and against before asking for a vote. The second was on the use of neo-Nazi symbolism and whether, in a democracy, it was okay for it to be banned.  Very thought provoking!

Brunch!

We had used our travel book to identify things we might like to walk to in the city center and set off to find the older parts of town before trying to get into the Van Gogh Museum. In wandering along some of the narrow streets, we came across an actual breakfast place. All the other open eating places we had encountered so far were bars!! (I like wine, but not so much before noon.) This was a pancake place and it was nearly empty, but we apparently just beat the 10am rush -- within 15 minutes after we sat down, it was loaded with college students, many carrying backpacks. We split a hearty breakfast, described as 3 eggs sunny-side up with cheese and bacon or ham. It was a very interesting presentation with bacon layered on the bottom and cheese melted over the top of the eggs. It was also very effective. One order kept both of us full til we got back to the hotel around 4:30!

Ould Kerk

Then it was back on the streets to wander around. We found the red light district sort of accidentally (I was trying to skirt it), and it made me wonder what kind of a life it is for an attractive young woman to hang out in front of a window in a bikini and hope for a visitor before noon. We located the Ould Kerk (old church from the 14th century) that was the start of the Dutch Reformation and overheard a tour guide tell his group that the saints in niches on the church were removed during this time. We found Den Waag,  a building that was part of the original city fortifications, and in search of a larger waterway than a canal, came across a sort of Chinatown (our local friend said there was an area of Chinese concentration, but no real Chinatown, and we definitely found it). We went into one of the stores to bring back Chinatown gifts for a few special people but couldn't find anything worth spending the euros on. It had a lot of the same stuff you see in San Francisco's Chinatown, including a preponderance of Japanese 'Hello Kitty' souvenirs.

Chinatown!

Den Waag -- was part of old fortifications

Amsterdam houseboats -- puts Sausalito to shame

We wandered by the new market on the way to one of the fanciest homes in the area, built in the 1660s. Most homes are three windows wide, and some are only two. This one had seven windows across the front with more space between than usual, so probably 3 normal-sized lots. It's now a business place. A lot of these old homes are very tilty -- some lean forward across the street, others lean left or right or some combination. I wonder what it it like to live in a place with no really flat floors!

Leaning homes

More leaning homes

Homes leaning over the street

First of the seven cute bridges

Our  next objective was an area with a narrow canal and a series of seven steep bridges across it. Then we headed toward what was supposed to be a department store with a cafe at the top with the best view of the town. It apparently died since the guide book was written a year or so ago, and it now an Abercrombie and Fitch with a long line of teenie-boppers and their parents waiting to get in to spend their cash. On our way to the museum plaza, we came across a shoe store with reddish boots and went in. Ever since I saw some red boots in Prague, Jim has been trying to find more for me to buy. This time I struck pay dirt. They are not bright red, but more of a dark cranberry and they were more on sale than I thought, so I saved us about 50 Euros!

One of many Van Goghs at the museum

Back across a major canal, we took a short break at a park, sort like Central Park or Golden Gate Park, then set out for our last formal objective, the Van Gogh Museum. I had tried to buy tickets online last night, but they were timed, and it wasn't clear from the site that the 1pm tickets could be used between 1pm and 3pm. It said if you missed your time slot, tough luck. We decided to take a chance on the line and were willing to blow it off if the line was nasty, but we really lucked out. We got there a bit before 2pm and were inside 15 minutes later. I was concerned about ABP (see yesterday), but this museum was fantastic --it was educational, helping you see the progression of Van Gogh's skills and his influences, and had relatively few of other people's work. We probably saw more art in 1.5 hours at the Rijksmuseum yesterday, but our hour and a half here was much more enjoyable and educational. It reminded me of the Monet Museum on the outskirts of central Paris that we saw/loved in 2002.

By the time we were done, however, we were really done. Our original plan with the brunch was to have a late lunch/early supper, and after the museum, we set out toward another area of the city in search of restaurants. Neither of us was dying of hunger, and we came across a nearby cafe with a reasonably priced onion soup that was also close to the tram, but their kitchen was closing in 5 minutes, and we saw our tram arriving, so we caught it and came back to the hotel instead. Dinner tonight will be some of the snacks we have been accumulating.