As previously mentioned, on Friday we were double booked for the Ann Frank House and the Van Gogh museum.  So we started out bright and early for Ann Frank’s house, which is about a 15 minute walk from the hotel.  It took us 26 minutes.  Too many beautiful canals and bridges on the way required photos and selfies. 

Anyways, we still arrived a few minutes before our 9:30 entrance time.  They provide you an audio guide, and the tour takes about an hour.  Usually, I am not an audio guide fan, but there’s no way to see and/or enjoy the museum without it.  We have been here before (back when you could just walk up, buy tickets, and walk right in), but I didn’t remember much of it.  Twenty-three years is a long time ago!  I’m quite ashamed to admit it,  but I have never actually read her diary. The museum is the secret annex where her family and 4 other Jews lived above the factory where her father had worked.  The annex is hidden behind a movable book shelf and is actually several stories of rooms.  It’s bigger than I thought it would be, but still quite small to stay hidden in for 2 years. I can’t even stay in my house an afternoon before I get restlesss and decide I need to go to the Dollar Tree or Walmart.  I can’t imagine hiding out, being quiet, not running the water during the day for 2 years.   Her father was the only one out of the eight people that survived the concentration camps they were taken to.

There’s no photos allowed inside the museum, but most of their belongings were removed when they were discovered and arrested.  The rooms are empty of furniture.  There’s video screens throughout that show interviews with her father and various other survivors.  I am glad that we were able to get tickets to visit.   Tickets are released weekly, six weeks in advance.  That means I had to set a reminder on my phone so that I could buy the tickets on May 27.  The tickets usually sell out in a day, and some time slots were already sold out when we bought ours early in the morning  .

After that, we had a 27 minute walk (per the google maps, which now tells me that I need to turn in 40 meters.  Seriously, just because I am in Netherlands doesn’t mean I want my directions in the metric system Google!)

The Van Gogh Museum is located in what is called the Museem Platz.  The National Art Gallery (which we did not purchase tickets to or have time to visit) is here as well. We also came here in 2000.  We were traveling around Europe for two months, and everywhere we went, someone was carrying a yellow poster tube from the Van Gogh museum. Seriously, all over Europe there were Van Gogh poster tubes.  Somehow, we were strong and did not succumb to poster tube peer pressure in 2000 or 2023.   These tickets we bought way before the Ann Frank ticekts.  They release them much further in advance, but they do not sell out quite as quickly.  If you are not picky about an entrance time, you can get some for next week right now.   But don’t delay because they WILL sell out. But I think despite what the tickets say, at Van Gogh it is more of a suggested entrance time.  We were supposed to arrive between 10 and 1030 per our ticket, but we left Ann Frank around 10:30 and then had a 27 minute walk to get there.  It was after 11 and they didn’t say a word when they looked at my ticket and ushered me into the building. And when they scanned my ticket at the entrance, no flashing lights or sirens went off.  But we were also just a little over an hour late from our assigned entrance time. 

I love Van Gogh and appeantly the rest of the world also thinks they love Van Gogh.  It was miserably crowded even with timed entrances. There were just people everywhere. Standing in my way, blocking the Sunflowers, blocking the self portraits, blocking every painting.  Of course, we did not let that stop us, but it did slow me down!  We spent over 3 hours there basking in the glory that is Van Gogh.  I wish he had known how beloved his work would be, maybe he would not have ended his life and would have kept on painting into perpetuity.   Just imagine, he spent the last 10 years of his life painting and painted over 800 paintings.  That is an incredible amount. He was a painting machine. There’s even a painting in the museum that he painted on a kitchen towel when he ran out of canvas.  He was unstoppable.  

There were a handful of paintings in the museum that were not Van Gogh’s– they were works that inspired Van Gogh– like Monet.  And, no one was standing in front of the Monets because, duh, not Van Gogh! Only at the Van Gogh would people scoff at a Monet!

Did I mention that we were there for over 3 hours? Needless to say, thetwinsontour were HANGRY.  As soon as we left there, we sat down at the first restaurant we found.  A restaurant with a broken oven. Fear not!  Their stovetop was working, so we got a “toastie” with shredded beef and some sauces.  It was delicious, and also 14 euros.  For context, it costs 16 euros to go to Ann Frank and 20 euros for Van Gogh.   And the dollar is about .91 euros, so that was more than 15 dollars for a little sandwich.   And we did NOT care because we were hangry.  Also, pretty much everything in Amsterdam is crazy expensive like that. Except french fries.  

After that we walked over to the Flower Market because my sister wanted to see tulips.  We found some, they were silk.   But, they have house plants so cheap!  They had beautiful umbrella plants for only 10 euros.  It is at least a $25-30 plant if you are lucky enough to find it at Sam’s Club.  If I didn’t have to get on a cruise ship and an airplane, and if it was legal to bring plants into the US, I would be the proud owner of at least 1 new umbrella plant.  They are virtually impossible to kill.  I have been trying since 1998 to kill the one I got from Grandpa’s funeral, but after 23 years it is finally flourishing.  I think it’s the regular watering that it gets now.  A dozen roses was about the same price.  

Then we walked a couple blocks over to Rembrant Plaza because how do you go to the Netherlands and not pay homage in some way to the other great Dutch painter?  There was an opera singer in the plaza giving a free concert! Complete with piano and cello.  Believe it or not, that was not the first full-sized piano we saw in the streets of Amsterdam.  The Dutch will not be intimidated by the logistics of wheeling a piano through the streets!  

As you may be able to guess, our phones were dangerously low on battery power after all of this non-stop excitement.  After a 30 minute airplane mode phone charge at the hotel, we were back out again to eat more pancakes.   Obviously, since it was dinner time, we got the savory pancakes this time.  Ham and cheese!  Quite tasty indeed!  And do you know what the best part was?  At this  particular pancake restaurant, you get a free souvenir keychain of a wooden shoe.  FREE!  thetwinsontour LOVE FREE STUFF!!!  Who wouldn’t want a Pancake House wooden shoe keychain?  Oh, well then, I will take yours too!

For the grand finale of the evening, STROOPWAFEL!   Yes, we had spied a Stroopwafel place earlier in the day with a long line outside the door, and we knew we had to go back for dessert.  There’s just no avoiding the allure off the stroopwafel anymore than the moth can avoid the flame or the twinsontour can avoid free stuff.  It’s impossible.   Impossible I say!

So, of course, even though it was 8pm, there was a long line of tourists outside the door.  Most of the other shops on the pedestrian street were closed, but Van Wonderen Stroopwafels since 1907 is open until 10pm.   The thing is, there are no prices posted for the Stroopwafels, just examples of the flavors like they do at Crumble.  Then they ask you if you want mini, medium, or mega.  The Mega just seemed excessive so we got a medium sea salt caramel and a medium Diam (a kind of European chocolate candy).  Can you guess what the total was? It was 26 euros!  Which was $30.  Those Stroopwafels were $15 each. Crazy!  Even the British guy we were talking to later thought that was outrageous, and he was from London.  Anways, the Stroopwafels were delicious and worth ever bit of their $13 euro price tag. Maybe. Probably. Definitely.

Obviously, by this time , it well was past thetwinsontour bedtime. 

Good night from Amsterdam!

PS. But wait!  There is more.   We didn’t have to board the cruise ship until noon on Saturday, so what did thetwinsontour do?  Sleep in late and relax?  Heck no!  We booked a free walking tour around Amsterdam at 9am.  Ideally, you should do a walking tour the first day you get to a city, not a couple hours before you leave, but I think that we have proven that there was absolutely no time for this previously. None at all! 

The only problem with our 9am walking tour was that it started to rain, and then it proceeded to rain at 9am, and rain throughout most of the tour. My pants were wet, my shoes were wet, and my socks were absolutely soaked through by the end of the tour.  Intrestingly enough, the tour ended about 11 and so did the rain.  Yes, it only rained during the walking tour.  Typical.   Good news is that our brand new REI raincoats are waterproof! The rest of me may have been soaked, but my raincoat was nice and dry! Surprisingly, this is a remarkably difficult feat. I don’t know why raincoats are not all waterproof.

We walked past the monkey bar, which is the oldest bar (and building too I think) in Amsterdam. It is one of only 2 wooden buildings remaining after a bad fire many years ago.  We saw the oldest gay bar in the world, dating back to pre WWII  We saw the skinniest house in Amsterdam.  It was built on a 15 foot wide plot instead of a 30 foot wide plot like all the others.   Absoultely adorable!  I think its a tea shop now?  Our guide sent us through a block of the red light district.  Obviously, at 10am there were no ladies sitting in windows (a very outdated buisiness model according to your guide), And we walked into a coffee shop for about 30 seconds, but the smell of marijuana smoke at 10:30 in the morning was a bit overwhelming.   It was surprising how many people are smoking pot in coffee shops on Saturday mornings.  

So, pot is not legal in Amsterdam. It is just de-criminalized.   Meaning that you can not be punished for smoking it.  The only legal place to buy it is in the coffee shops. There are a limited number of coffee shops in Amsterdam, and they will not add anymore.  However, there are only 2 legal marijuana farms in the Netherlands which is not enough farms to supply all the coffee shops and massive numbers of tourists, so the coffee shop owners have to buy the pot illegally in order to legally sell it in their shops.  Also, an outdated business model.  And that is coffee shops in a nut shell. They also sell coffee, but I can’t imagine wanting to go sit in a haze of pot smoke to drink  a capuccino.

The end!  Next stop, cruising to Norway!!!!!!