Amsterdam (Part 2)

So I couldn't resist showing a little more of our next day in Holland. We spent it in Amsterdam. We rode the train from our seaside village into Amsterdam's central station with an interesting stop at the Harleem station (remember Ocean's 12? the train scene?. . . we were there!!!!! I feel closer to George Clooney than ever before)
After arriving in the city we walked out to Dam square and found a bakery to eat a treat. On the way I took a shot at the main form of transportation in the city and in the country. Look closely at the line, looks like a car park but NO it is chuck full of bikes bumped one on top of the next, thousands of bikes!
Our next stop was the Anne Frank House. The entrance is on the far right, the gray metal building and the Annex is the next building to the left.
The words I use to describe this experience are surreal, my heart was racing before we even entered the main part of the house. But as we walked through the bookcase into the secret Annex it became so real to me the actual experience they had hiding here for almost 2 years. The blackout screens were still on the windows, the rooms were small and probably suffocating after the first month. The stairs were backbreaking steep. The three parts of the tour that made the biggest impact on me where 1. seeing Anne's room with her pictures still on the wall. The room is tiny and she had to share this with another man. No privacy whatsoever for any of them. 2. Walking to a front window where you can pull the shade back just a bit to see the street below. As you look out a black and white photo has been placed outside the window like a rearview mirror is attached to a car. The photo is showing the day that many Dutch Jews were lined up in that particular street under arrest with the SS guards standing all around. They were to be taken to Poland to the concentration camps. My heart ached at seeing the photo superimposed on the exact street it was taken on. 3. At the end of the tour there is a memorial room that shows pictures of the 8 people from the Annex with their death certificates. Behind Anne's picture is a looped video of images from the concentration camps. My emotions were no longer kept inside as I viewed a Jewish woman, a prisoner, doing laundry next to a large pile of naked dead bodies waiting to be burned. Even now as I think of that image my emotions rise to the surface and tears spill from my eyes. I will never understand how this much human suffering happened and within the last 60 years, a time where we were experiencing a rush of technology and modernism.
Afterwards, we hopped on a canal boat tour to see more of the city without walking our legs off.
We stopped at the Van Gogh museum. It was the best museum experience for my kids so far in Europe. They provide an audio tour just for kids along with a treasure hunt pamphlet that they fill out as they toured his works. At the end they were rewarded with a prize and and award for being a Van Gogh expert. The kids absolutely loved it! I was so impressed with his works and would not have ever been so if not seen in person. To see the layers of paint and the strokes of his brush up close and personal was a thrill and gave me new insight into his talent. After the museum we stopped for pannenkoeken (pancakes) and finished the tour of the city via the boat tour. Here are some random shots of the city.

Typical architecture:

Delft PotteryHooks at the top of houses to lift furniture and other things when they move in.

Soft drugs, although illegal, are "tolerated" everywhere in Amsterdam. Hence the Cannabis lollipops! Oh boy!Okay, this poster was just flat out funny! Had to photog it! What do you think sis? Pretty funny eh?!
Me and Kristine on the train: