March 27: Amsterdam

A Wonderful Sunday
By Augusta

Us at the Anne Frank House

Today, we went to Amsterdam to  Anne Frank's hiding place until she and her family were betrayed in August of 1944. We arrived around 12 noon and hiked to the back of the line that stretched all the way back behind 2 buildings!

It being cloudy and very windy; we jogged in place, checked out a cheese store and souvenir shop, and pushed each other around to keep from freezing completely in the cold air. :)

After waiting for an hour and a half,  we finally entered the museum's entrance. We got guidebooks explaining each room in detail as we moved throughout the secret annex.

 Life in the Secret Annex was stressful! The 8 people living there were not allowed to move around, shout, peek out the windows, or go outside for fear of being discovered and deported to the concentration camps. Otto Frank was the only one to survive the war, making it to the grand old age of 91.

He fulfilled his daughter's dream of publishing a book about her experiences in the Secret Annex. Her diary has and continues to inspire millions to rise above despair and firmly believe that life will get better and has meaning!

After we were finished with the tour, we went to a pancake house and ordered pancakes. The pancakes were humongous!! They were the same size as the big plate they arrived on. We tried a variety of sweet and savory panakoeken.












Next,  we walked through Amsterdam, stopping to look at candy in a chocolate shop before walking to Centraal Station (the train station). Once there, we grabbed some snacks for dinner since we didn't want to buy dinner at the hotel.  We barely made it inside before the rain predicted all day started dumping buckets of water on the town. We took the escalator upstairs and stood waiting for the train at which turned out to be the wrong place. When we realized it, it was almost too late! We could see our train waiting down the rail line and we all ran as fast as our pumping legs would carry us to jump on the train before the doors closed. We made it just in time (whew!).

 

The train took us to the bus near our hotel, then the bus took us the rest of the way home. This is the first day since embarking on our adventure that we arrived back before daylight faded, which was so nice! We arrived and saw the most BEAUTIFUL rainbow and relaxed for the evening.