Day 3 – Tuesday – Canal Trip and Anne Frank’s House

We ran into the Paparazzi yesterday.  There is a theatre just around the corner from the hotel, which we were walking past last night.  Just as we came up to it, a bunch of guys who were milling around outside stepped in front of us on the pavement, with their huge lensed cameras up to their face, at the ready.  Ooooh, I thought, who have they mistaken us for, but no, we were able to walk past, before they started firing away.  We turned round to see who was the centre of attention, but didn’t recognise who the couple were – probably a footballer. 

This morning we were up at 7am, and went for a walk for an hour and a half in the area between the hotel and Anne Frank’s House.  It’s a very nice part of Amsterdam, all residential neighborhoods beside the canals, which are nicely combined with a mix of upmarket boutique stores, restaurants and bars.

After breakfast in the hotel we went for an hour cruise on the canals – a must do thing, when you’re in Amsterdam.  There’s a wide range of boats running round the canals – everything from the little pedal boats, which seem to spend a large amount of their time bumping into things, through to self-hire boats, large dinghy style boats, all the way up to the large flat wide boats that can take a hundred or so people and double up as floating restaurants in the evening.  We settled on one of the large dinghy style boats, as it is a beautiful day, and we fancied a slightly less populated experience.  There were 6 of us on the boat, and our driver, Peter. 

We learnt a lot about what Amsterdam is doing to promote environmental solutions in the city, and electric vehicles are a big part of that – our boat was an electric boat, the trams are electric, there are lots of concessions for electric cars, and diesel cars and trucks are being banned from the centre of the city, to improve the pollution levels.  We also learnt a lot about the different districts that we were passing through, the map makers area, the financial district, the port workers sector, the Marijuana barge and a whole lot of other things.  It was a pleasant way to spend an hour

We booked tickets to visit Anne Frank’s House at 7pm.  Again, we had been advised to buy tickets ahead of time, and had bought them a couple of weeks ago, so could go straight to the front of the 100 metre queue at our allotted time.  There is only a small number of people that can be in the annexe at any one time, so the queue only goes down to the extent that people haven't pre-purchased tickets - it looked glacial.  

I have just finished reading her diary, so my impressions of the annexe and her experiences there were very fresh in my mind. It was a funny feeling sitting in a café on the other side of the canal having a coffee, knowing that not so very long ago people were hiding and living in fear of their lives in places like the one we were about to visit.  It made us feel very lucky to live in such a free time, and to live in a tolerant society where people are mostly free from persecution. 

The annexe is very small, with lots of little rooms.  In addition to the cramped conditions, was the fact that the 8 occupants had to be mostly silent all through the working day because the factory workers didn’t know they were in hiding there, and couldn’t be trusted not to betray them. 

The tour of the annexe took about 45 minutes, and contained lots of videos about the people hiding in the Annexe, the situation in Amsterdam during WWII and how the Jews were treated and their freedoms reduced over time, until they were rounded up and deported to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria.

We ended the day at an Argentinian Steak House, which is one of the most common types of restaurant in Amsterdam.  I’ve tried to find out why, and the answers I’ve found range from “cos we like meat”, to “it’s the simplest way to make money”.  Not the historic connection or some other interesting connection between the two countries I was hoping for, but at least the meal was good.