We left our campsite in Arnhem and drove for about one hour to Amsterdam. We arrived at our new site around 11:30 and settled in. We made lunch and planned what we would do for the afternoon. The metro was a short walk from our campsite and we were in the centre of town in 20 minutes. We hopped off and planned on catching a tram to the start of our walking tour. Unfortunately the tram stop was out of use and there was no information on where the next nearest one was. We discovered over the next few days that while Amsterdam has a great transit system, it can be a bit hard to figure out what the tram routes are and where they actually stop because they don't have comprehensive maps. Instead, we headed back to the metro to take it one more stop and then just walked to the start of the walking tour.

We set off from Dam square which was very large and surrounded by cafés and shops. There was also the Madame Tussaud’s wax museum which seems to have a branch in every major city, or perhaps every capital. The royal palace at one end of the square used to be the town hall until Napoleon invaded and set up a monarchy there. We passed between the palace and a church before ending up at a fancy looking mall made out of red brick. We popped in for a quick look and some cheese samples. The gouda (pronounced "how-da") is definitely tasty! We continued our way through the Jordaan neighbourhood, passing over canals and through cute streets. It was a very pretty area of Amsterdam and we enjoyed our stroll.

Once we finished our walking tour, we decided to check out the Anne Frank house to see what the line-up was like. It was actually quite short so we thought we’d head in and visit it while we were in the area. We followed a one way route through the warehouse, storerooms, past the secret stairway behind the hidden bookshelf, up the stairs and in to the living quarters. It was amazing how small the quarters were with eight people living in four rooms. They also had blackout material on the windows to give you an idea of how dim it could be. I think that would have been hard enough, never mind the fact that they couldn’t look out the windows in case someone saw them. Anne’s diaries, stories & favourite quotes book were on display as well as pages from the version of her diary which she had been editing. At the end of the tour there was information on what happened to the people who were hiding in the house as well as information about those who helped them. There were also a couple of videos with stories from Otto (Anne’s dad), Miep (one of the office staff who helped them) and one of Anne’s friends from school who last saw her in the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen where she was also being held. At the end of the tour there was an interesting video presentation on different situations where the line of what your right is vs. the rights of others was blurred and it polled the audience at the end of each video segment to see what your opinion was. You could push a button to say whether you agreed or disagreed with the statement and then it showed the stats for in the room at that moment and afterwards what the stats were for all polled. It was very interesting to see their different scenarios and think about what was ok or not – some seemed fairly straightforward while others weren’t. We were very glad that we had visited and it was good that we had both just read her book as it helped you to imagine what life was like and the struggles they faced while in hiding.

After our visit we headed back to camp to make dinner, do some planning, and make use of the internet which we got in the van (always nice for backing up photos!).

April 16

Tuesday we headed in to town and walked to the Hermitage museum. The museum usually hosts collections from the Hermitage in Russia, but as the Van Gogh museum is under renovation, it is hosting about 75 of his works in an exhibit. The exhibit focused on his evolution as an artist and the development of his skill as he practiced more and more. The collection was excellent and it was wonderful to see so many of his works in one place rather than just the occasional one. I loved his irises and sunflowers as well as many of his landscapes and self-portraits. The colours he used in his later works were just amazing and I loved how bright they were. There was also a great video explaining about Van Gogh’s life and where he was painting and when. I was extremely glad that we were able to see some of his works while the other museum was being renovated. We then had a quick walk through the Peter the Great exhibit, but weren’t too terribly interested so decided to move on.

We had a quick lunch sitting on a bench enjoying the canal view in front of us. Since it was quite windy, we didn’t linger long and made our way to the Dutch Resistance museum. This museum was quite interesting since I didn’t know much about the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. The exhibit talked about how at first the Germans were trying to win over the Dutch people so that they would collaborate with them. As it moved through the war years and as various events took place, the museum showed how more and more people resisted their occupation and how what started out as a “peaceful” occupation soon changed. The main question behind the museum was “adapt, collaborate or resist”? As we worked our way through, the museum presented different viewpoints and explanations from individuals or groups who had chosen one path or another. It was very interesting to read all about the various resistance activities that did take place from smuggling babies and children out of the nursery, to hiding Jewish families, to sabotage, to printing false papers etc. There were so many different ways that the Dutch people did resist, some of which helped a few people and some of which helped many more. I liked that they presented stories wide ranging stories from individuals such as one lady who had children who were friends with the neighbour’s daughter who was Jewish. She was taking her boys to the zoo and they asked if their friend could come with them. Their mom had to decide whether to break the rule about Jewish people being banned from the zoo; she did and said that they spent a lovely day there. Such actions may not have contributed in any significant way to helping the Jewish population, but it showed that many Dutch people didn’t just roll over and accept German rule. There were many stories about people who chose to adapt, collaborate or resist and it was interesting to see why they chose one route versus another. One display that I found interesting had a homemade radio antenna which people had built to be able to listen to the BBC or Radio Orange (from their queen) who had fled to the UK. Since the Germans were attempting to jam the signal of these stations, the Allies dropped pamphlets explaining how they could get around it. The last section we visited had the perspective of the people of the former Dutch East Indies and their life under Japanese rule during their occupation. Unfortunately by this time we were rather overloaded with information and just did a cursory read of the displays.

We then hopped on a tram which went on a detoured route of some sort; luckily we sorted out where we were and got off generally in the right area. We were quite close to a take-out Indonesian place so we grabbed a quick snack of noodles with chicken in sate sauce. It was tasty and perhaps more so since we were really hungry. Then we set off to meet up with Daan, the guy we had met in September when Dad & Tan were with us. We thought we knew where we were going, but our map only had the major roads listed. By the time we figured out where we were, we had walked about three times as far in the wrong direction. We found a metro and jumped on, arriving about 20 minutes late. Oops! We walked over to a pancake restaurant which makes pancakes from all over the world. Of course we were going for the Dutch pancake and we both opted for bacon & cheese with a jug of lemonade. It was very tasty and we decided that we should try a sweet topping one next time we go out. The guy in the restaurant gave us two clog keychains to take with us as a souvenir. We decided that it was still too early to head back to camp and we were still busy chatting so Daan suggested we go across the canal to a bar for a beer. He and Anoop had a Heineken and I had a delicious fresh orange juice. We continued chatting for quite a while and Daan showed us the album from his cycling trip from Amsterdam to Monaco and back. Eventually we decided that we should get going and he walked with us back to the metro. It was lots of fun meeting up with him and we were glad that it had worked out.

April 17

Wednesday we took the metro all the way to the other end of the line and did a second walking tour from there to the museum quarter. The walk took us a few hours since we popped into a few shops to browse on the way. I particularly liked the flower market where they were selling lovely bouquets and TONS of bulbs. You could buy 100 tulip bulbs for 10 euros! One place also had a great deal on tulip bouquets – 50 stems for 6 euros! We couldn’t believe it and I wanted to buy a bunch, but in the end we decided it would be too much effort to carry them around all day. We had another picnic lunch along the canal which was really nice.

Then we decided to pop in to the Rijksmuseum which is enormous. Normally in such a short time we wouldn’t bother popping in, but it had just re-opened three days before and was included in our museum pass. We decided to just check out the highlights and skip the other rooms. This is not our style and it felt very strange to skip entire floors and walk past rooms without stopping. We enjoyed the collection of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Steen and other Dutch masters. There was also an incredible Delft pottery vase for holding tulips and a wonderful model of a ship that was taller than me. It was a museum where you could spend days and the short time we had barely scratched the surface of the collection. We did decided that they needed more staff for their cloakroom though because we spent about 30 minutes just waiting in line to check and then pick up our bag & jackets.

We also wanted to visit the Stedelijk museum which is modern art. We aren’t normally modern/contemporary art fans, but it said that there were some works by Kandinsky, Chagall, Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse who we do like. The bottom floor had a mostly great collection of works which we quite enjoyed. The upper floor was mostly strange and difficult for us to appreciate. We particularly “enjoyed” the cream coloured canvas titled “Castle XXXIV”. It was rather difficult to stop giggling at the description of some pieces and we really wondered how the painting and the description could possibly be related. Anoop thought that he needed a “Modern Art for dummies” book to help him out the next time. It was much less crowded that the Rijksmuseum and it was nice to have all the space we wanted to admire, or not, the various works.

We then headed out and walked over to Kartika, an Indonesian restaurant that had great reviews on trip advisor. Mom had told us that we should absolutely do a rice table if we were in Amsterdam and so we did some research to find a good place. Since Anoop lived in Indonesia for so long, he didn’t want to be disappointed and spent quite a while looking for a place that had good reviews. This one sounded the best and was quite reasonably priced compared to some of the other restaurants. He popped in to ask if they could substitute the beef dishes for something else and they said that wouldn’t be a problem. We decided to come back a bit later since it was still quite early and wandered over to the park to relax for a bit. By 6:00 I was starving and quite ready to head back to the restaurant. Our server was from Indonesia and it turns out that she actually lived in Surabaya not far from where Anoop lived! She was studying in Amsterdam and had been there for almost two years. She got our table set up and we had two silver dish warmers in the middle of the table. She brought us prawn crackers and bean crackers with two different sauces to snack on while we waited. Then she brought out a huge tray with eleven different dishes and rice. She explained what each one was before we started. All of the dishes were incredible! I ate my half of all eleven, much to Anoop’s disappointment. The flavours were wonderful and only one of them was a bit too spicy for my liking. We particularly enjoyed the Sayur Lodeh, vegetables in a coconut sauce, the Ayam Kuning, chicken in a yellow curry, and the gado gado, veggies in a peanut sauce with lemongrass. The chicken sate was also delicious and the peanut sauce was the best I’ve had. We savoured every bite and I was actually sad when it was all done. We were quite full, but not overly stuffed and had a smile on our face the rest of the way home. It was definitely an excellent intro to Indonesian food and I asked Anoop why he hadn’t made it before! That will definitely be remedied when we get home!