Amsterdam

The city of Amsterdam is an amazing arrangement of canals, purposely built in the 17th century, to make the most of the Amstel river. A canal cruise is the best way to get around and see what the city has to offer.

There are rows and rows of tall, narrow buildings with stepped gable facades, which used to be mostly residential. These days however, they are generally owned by corporations and the very rich, with the interiors having been converted to office blocks, units and hotels.

 Notice how all the buildings have a beam that protrudes from the top of the gable. Historically, these were used to winch provisions and deliveries from the canal boats below, up to the higher floors.

My Amsterdam highlight was a visit to the Van Gogh Museum, which has the largest collection of the artist's works in the world.

Click here to view Van Gogh artwork.  http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=425&lang=en&section=sectie_museum

The Rijksmuseum includes works by Rembrandt and Vermeer.

This very plain looking building below, has a very special interior. This is the house where Anne Frank and her family spent two years in hiding during Nazi occupation, before they were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

 

The rooms have been maintained as they were when Anne Frank wrote her diary there. The pictures that she pasted on the walls to brighten the room are still there. She died of Typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, just before liberation.

 Just like other famous places with terrible histories, it was an incredibly moving experience to visit the Anne Frank house, to look at the original diary entries, to step behind the bookcase and climb the narrow stairs and into the rooms where 8 people lived in fear and in secret for 25 months. Her father Otto Frank, was the only one of the 8 to survive the war and it was his mission that the house be preserved and that Anne's diary be published. It is this image of Otto Frank in the house that will stay with me.