Belgium and Holland: One More Day

Sadly, this was our last day here.  I would have liked a few more days both in Belgium and The Netherlands because there are so many things to see.  That being said, we got to visit some really interesting places.

This morning we went to the Dutch national museum, Rijksmuseum.  This building is like their Louvre and is probably more widely known for its outstanding collection of Rembrandt and Vermeer.  Vermeer's famous The Milkmaid was sadly actually AT the Louvre for repairs but they had another one of his wonderful paintings, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, on display in its place.  Rembrandt's Night Watch was much larger than I expected and it seemed to be the most popular piece of art.  I focused mostly on the floor featuring Dutch artists and crafts.  There was a wonderful dollhouse made with real luxury building materials (like marble tile floors) and it cost almost as much as a real house in Amsterdam at the time.  There was a lovely Delft pottery collection that included a couple of remarkable Delft violins.  I almost didn't go through their Medieval art collection but it was just as impressive as the rest of the exhibits.

The museum gift shop had a couple of very cute Playmobile sets.  

The other one was for Night Watch.

 Behind the musem

Otto Frank's warehouse is the on the far left of this photo

In the afternoon we went to the Anne Frank House, a sobering and powerful experience.  The museum is made up of Otto Frank's spice warehouse and the famous annex building in the back.  You begin your tour by going through the warehouse, which has information about what Amsterdam was like for Jews right before and during mass roundups, leading up until the point the Frank family and four other Jews went into hiding.  After climbing through the secret opening behind the bookcase the annex is, as you can imagine, depressingly cramped.  When the Nazis arrested everyone all of the furniture and possessions were removed.  Preserved under glass are postcards and newspaper clippings that the Frank girls glued to the original walls.  You can see pencil marks where Anne Frank's mother tracked the height of her daughters during their two years in hiding.  Anne's original diary and notebooks are on display.

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the city and doing some last bits of shopping.  We still had some leftover bread and cheese at the rental flat so we had a late afternoon snack and then skipped dinner.  At the last minute we decided to go on a canal boat tour since it was such a lovely and sunny afternoon.

The building we stayed in

The next morning we took a bus to the airport and flew, nonstop, back to the USA and regular life.