Amsterdam its intricate canal system was fascinating, as well as beautiful.
The size of the house is noted by how many windows. There are even a few with only one window on each level.
Many of Amsterdam's buildings have hooks. Why? The leaning buildings have a cantilevered beam and hook protruding from the gable at roof height. These would be used to winch their possessions to the upper levels. Quite clever, don't you think?
And the houses were built with a forward incline to help prevent items from colliding with the building on their way to the upper floors.
These are scattered on the streets of Amsterdam to remind us all of the atrocities.
The Anne Frank House is probably to most famous house in Amsterdam. The former home of Anne Frank attracts around a million visitors a year. For over two years Anne Frank and her family hid in the annex of the building at Prinsengracht 263 where Anne’s father, Otto Frank, had his business. We were unable to get a tour, but we watched a documentary once we got back to the hotel to get the full story. Very sobering to think of their sacrifice.
The house is Rembrandt's, a "Dutch Master" artist.
The Van Gogh Museum was very interesting, this painting was actually done by a different artist but Van Gogh loved it personally.
Van Gogh painted a lot of self-portraits to practice techniques and color blending. He gave many of the them to his brother who helped fund his artistic enterprise. Later these paintings and others would form the basis upon which Van Gogh's fame and museum were founded.
Van Gogh suffered from acute mental illness and his self-portraits are a haunting depiction of his torment. The portrait below is the famous painting he did of himself after he cut his ear off.
We encounter street performers all over Europe. This young lady was particularly good so we dropped a few coins in their hat in from of them.
Will and Val said we had to try a stroopwafel. We had to hunt for one that was made fresh, but alas, we did find one at Melly's ... and it didn't disappoint.
From our hotel we had a nice view of Dam Square with the palace in the background.
We had lunch near here after our This is Holland Flight Experience on our way home.
It was as though we were really flying over the Dutch landscape.
A view from across the river.
