All Amsterdam Today

We spent the entire day walking the length and breadth of Amsterdam. We started with the Anne Frank House. The museum that the Frank house has now become is extremely well done. The story is told with Anne’s words and some video from survivors and news clips from the 30s and 40s. We all found it a very moving experience. We walked and saw many of the canals and picturesque bridges that connect the city’s streets. We were in Dam Square, The Rembrandt plaza, the skinny bridge, the flower market, the Bejinhof cloister and finished in the Red Light district. Amsterdam is a city of extreme contrasts, we went from the Frank House to Amsterdam’s monument to homosexuals, from the Bejinhof cloister with its religious focus to the red light district with scantly dressed prostitutes in the windows, from the beauty of the flower market to WWII resistance sites. All the while the Amsterdamers are merrily rolling along on bicycles. We’ve never seen a city with so many bikes; it isn’t unusual to see a woman with two children on a bike rolling along talking on a cell phone, nary a helmet on any of them. Truly a memorable city!
No sign of any volcanic ash in the sky, hardly even a cloud.