Europe Trip 2010 Day 5 - Amsterdam

9 Aug - Amsterdam. The Netherlands is famous for many things: wooden shoes, cheese, flowers, windmills, and women in windows. The girls would see it all!! On our way, we took a detour to Kinderdjik. There are 19 original windmills there. It is a very nice site and the girls toured one of the windmills to see how it works and how people lived in them. We arrived in Amsterdam and went to the Rijksmuseum. It is the National Art museum of the Netherlands. It is a great museum. The display collection is small but fantastic. Some of the art work is amazing and just cannot be described how detailed it is. Some of the painting are better than real life with such amazing color after 400-500 years!! This is the largest collection of Rembrandt's works in the world. The girls really enjoyed it. We were going to the Van Gogh Museum but the line was LONG and we had other things to do. We took the bus, the best way to travel in town, to the Central Station, and then walked through the town. The girls toured a museum while Jamie and I shopped. We went to the Old Church and then thru a part of the Red Light district. I was not allowed to shop :(((( We saw many open coffee shops but in Amsterdam, these are drug shops where marijuana is sold legally but regulated and NO coffee. After an uneventful walk thru the Red Light district, we made our way to the Anne Franke House. We toured the house, pretty much in the original condition less furniture. It was very moving. The maturity, honesty and understanding that the 12 yr old girl had of the events is amazing and how much it has moved many people. It has probably moved many people to a better understanding and tolerance of others but the events she lived thru are still happening in the world today. Jamie is the same age as Anne was when she began the diary. There were probably many other kids that kept diaries that were lost or discarded. Any in the Eastern Europe were destroyed by the communist. One recently came to public from boy from Prague who tells the same stories as Anne - living in hiding before being found and sent to the camps. It was kept secret for years while Czechoslovakia was under the Communist control. After that moving experience, it was hard to be excited about dinner but we reflected and took the bus to the restaurant. We treated the girls to a traditional Amsterdam Rice Table. This is the best of Indonesian cooking. You are thinking - Rice and Indonesian traditional Holland??? Jim has had too much beer - close but........ Anyway, in the 1600s, Holland was 3rd behind Portugal and Spain in colonies. The dutch were a great sea nation and trading county. Much of present day Indonesia was under Dutch control....thus Indosesian cooking made its way to Holland. A Rice table is rice with ALOT of other misc foods - similiar to Spanish tapas but is ordered as one family style meal. Of course, beer was on the menu as well. The girls were AMAZED and ate everything!!!! Because of Kim's delicate palate, the cook made her a special plate of rice and meats without the spices!!!!!! After dinner, we said goodbye to Amsterdam and headed to Volendam to the hotel. Outside Anne Frank House Rice table

Kinderdijk Windmill Museum

The Girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!