Amsterdam, cont.

Our last full day in Amsterdam dawned earlier than usual for us. (By the way, the sun is up around 5:30/6 am here! Then it doesn’t get dark until well after 10pm). Learning from my previous experience in Amsterdam, I bought advance tickets for us to visit the Anne Frank house. Last time I was in Amsterdam, we waited for probably 2 or 3 hours in line to just get tickets …. I didn’t want to repeat that. Apparently now they don’t even sell tickets in person – they must be bought online. So a couple months ago I ordered them and just got whatever time was available – I couldn’t be choosy because these tickets sell out fast. We had to be at the museum by 9:30 am. We decided to walk since it was just about a mile away, not too bad. We are enjoying how flat Amsterdam is compared to Italy and Switzerland, hahaha. When we arrived, there was already a short line outside for our time slot.

It is so sobering to see the rooms where Anne and her family hid for two years before they were betrayed and taken to concentration camps. And to see her actual diaries that she wrote in. Truly a soul taken unjustly – hers and the millions of others that suffered and died needlessly during the war. This was my second visit to the museum, and it was just as striking as the first time. This time, I took particular note of the walls that had photos and magazine cutouts pasted on them – in hiding, you only have so many things to amuse yourself with, and seeing the images that were chosen by the girls for the walls was like looking into the window of a couple youths that were trying to keep themselves amused despite all the fear and stress they were under.

After visiting Anne Frank, we went next door for a late breakfast of Dutch pancakes! Mine had apples and bacon, while Kiley’s just had bacon. They are cooked really thin, almost crepe-like, and the accoutrements are cooked into the batter. It was yummy! At this point, Kiley said “I want a nap” and I agreed – so that is what we did! We walked back to the hostel and went to sleep for a few hours. I guess we needed it!

When we rejoined the land of the living, we decided to check off the one thing we hadn’t from our list – the Red Light District. It is quite something to behold – we went when it was still light outside, because I wasn’t too confident about our safety after dark in that area. We wandered around a bit until we came across a small museum about the Red Light District. We decided to go in and check it out – it ended up being a brief history of the area, and explained what it is like for a sex worker that works in that area in their day to day business. It was interesting information, and the museum took us through some staged “typical” rooms that the sex workers would use with their clients. What I found most interesting was that there was a couple of opportunities for us – the museum visitors – to get a taste of what it’s like to be ‘checked out’ by passerby’s – there was a digital “window” where potential clients would walk by and look at you, ask you how much, check you out, etc… then there was an actual window overlooking the street where you could “practice” posing and trying to lure potential clients. Kiley just waved, I just looked, lol. But it was interesting that the museum tried to put us in that particular headspace! I don’t have any photos of this area because there are rules about not photographing the women in the windows, and for anything else… well, it’s not safe for work, if you catch my drift 😜

We wandered around a bit more, then decided it was time to find some grub. Kiley heard about some local food hall that she wanted to check out, so we walked to that. It was a nice little place, it was actually next door to some shopping and a cinema, and there were numerous options for food. We both didn’t want to do anything too complicated, so we ended up getting hot dogs. But they weren’t any old Oscar Mayer wieners – they were actual sausages on pretzel rolls. They were pretty good, if super messy! I wasn’t satisfied with just a hot dog, though, so we walked to a nearby place that sold fries and that completed my meal 🙂

Cheers to our last night in Amsterdam. I enjoyed this city as much as I did the first time, and I can see myself coming back again for even more art and shenanigans.

The next morning was just packing up and getting ready to leave. We grabbed a quick breakfast nearby then took the tram to Amsterdam Centraal and waited for our bus that would take us to the ferry terminal for our boat ride to the UK! 🇬🇧 While waiting, we had to get a drink… I had a delicious fruit beer again, unfortunately I didn’t save the name so I don’t remember what it was… but it was so yummy, I’d definitely get it again if I knew what it was called…

More later…