Maeventures: Amsterdam June 2010

Next country on the list is The Netherlands. I arrive in Amsterdam, excited to meet my friend Lindy, who is coming to join me from San Francisco.

She meets me at the tram stop outside the house of Sara, a friend of a friend, with whom we are planning on staying (who quickly becomes our friend as well).

We have three days in the Netherlands, with a loose itinerary, but on our list is a canal tour, a visit to the Albert Cuyp market, the Ketel One distillery (separate post) and the Anne Frank house (green / black doors below):

I had just read Anne Frank's diary for the first time on the plane (to Frankfurt--prolly not so politically correct), so the story and the quotes on the walls were fresh in my mind. It was a really sobering experience to see the tiny rooms where 8 people lived for 2 years without ever going outside for fresh air. It was even more tear jerking to watch videos of the liberation of concentration camps prisoners--old women on their knees kissing soldiers hands for setting them free. It's sometimes hard to believe all that madness actually happened.

However, there is a bright side to it all, in that Otto Frank (her dad) kept and preserved so many of the family's stories and artifacts in the interest of promoting tolerance in diversity long after WWII.

After the tour of Anne's house, we walk around the city. The canals are really beautiful. This one is Lindy's favorite:

It is one of the prettier ones. The way the canals shape the streets also causes interesting architecture. I have to wonder what the rooms are like in this house:

Travelling around by canal also creates interesting twists on common problems, such as traffic jams. In the end, the little paddle boat on the right got gently pushed into a canal wall as another tour boat passed on the other side:

We walked a lot this day, seeing various different sights. In this very tolerant city, we also found some non-tolerance:

So in case you're a pirate, know that you can't go to what is now an old boarded up cafe.

After navigating the maze of canals for awhile (it doesn't get old, really):

Sara gets done with work so we meet up with her and her friends for a drink at Cafe Thijsen, a wonderfully pleasant little outdoor cafe with long picnic tables just off one of the canals.