I Amsterdam

No, I did not make a grammatical error. The picture above is of a sign made of large block letters at the edge of a park in Amsterdam. The building in the background is the Rijyks Museum which houses a large collection of Rembrandt and other Dutch masters, such as Jan Vermeer. Rembrandt’s use of light is just amazing. “The Night Watch” is there, possibly his most famous painting. Many others are also there, including several self portraits, which I really liked. The “Night Watch” is a huge painting; sometime in the 17th century(?) they decided to hang it in the city hall between two doors and had to cut off about 3 feet so it would fit. Makes you ask what the hell were they thinking?
We stayed at a hotel in a small village near the airport. We took a hotel shuttle to the airport and caught a train to downtown Amsterdam, the central train station. We walked from there to the Rijyks Museum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank Museum. The Anne Frank museum is the house where she and her family from the Nazis during the WWII. Very moving, especially her bedroom. The krauts paid whoever betrayed them the equivalent of $1.42. The betrayer has never been determined. The father is the only family member who survived the Auschwitz and Belsen camps.
We also walked along the canals.

The canal houses, shops and warehouses were built primarily from the 16th thru the 18th centuries.


As you can see many of these houses are now leaning. Amsterdam is built on swamp, and thus the foundations are not too stable.


There were many interesting doors and windows, one of which is shown here.