Brother Bee and I spent a fantastic night (dripping with sarcasm) in our hostel. I’m pretty sure if it wasn’t the fantastically loud slamming of our hostel door that woke me up every ten minutes, it was the wonderment that I’d have to spend another 3 nights with these people. I mean really. I forgot to add that right before we crawled into our beds for the night, I went to brush my teeth (good, good) and returned to find our lower bunk-mate’s clothing spread out across my suitcase! Not to mention their stuff strewn about the room covering not only their 1 square foot of space, but ours as well. So, I oh-so-tactfully tossed her sweaty shirt back onto her own suitcase, moved her tooth brush away from mine, and made sure that my Sherpani bag was tucked next to me the whole night. But I’m being facetious.

We woke up, dressed, and headed out. Having no desire to kill more brain cells by way of marijuana smoke, we headed to a local pastry shop to grab breakfast. Delicious. We then charted our way to the museums and through Day 1 of my Frommer’s Amsterdam Day-by-Day book. This lead us to the Rijksmuseum, which is currently 90% under construction, but they have moved all of the “important” works to the last 10% so you don’t really miss too much. Here we saw all kinds of works from important artists like Monet, Manet, Rembrandt, and my favorite, Vermeer, who was a Dutch painter, so most of his known works have stayed in the Netherlands. There was also a casket with a dead guy inside, his armor, and parts of his own art collection…never know what you’ll find.

From there we made way to the Van Gogh Museum. This is the largest collection of Van Gogh originals in one place in the world. It was fantastic. Set on three floors, it includes numerous paintings, over 900 letters to his brother, and collections of his contemporaries and students. Most famous is on of his 5 sunflower paintings which was amazing…so bright and brilliant in brush stroke. Another highlight of this museum is the multiple self portraits. These two museums took up the better part of our day. However, we still had one more stop. But it was lunch time, and conveniently, the Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam, was right across the street, so we had to stop. I purchased my third Hard Rock Cafe shirt while we were waiting to pay $20 for a burger. Actually, it was a quite good burger, there were hardly any people there, so it made for a great, quite lunch. Frommer’s recommended we visit our last stop after 4pm to avoid the crowds, so our late lunch was perfect. I know, sounds kinda cheesy, but planning is everything!

After our filling lunch, we made the 30 minute trek back to the north side of Amsterdam to visit our last stop, not a famed coffee house, but the Anne Frank Huis. This is the actual house in which the Franks and 4 other companions hid from the Nazis in the Secret Annex. The Museum starts in the lower level, which acted as the warehouse for Otto Frank’s spices company. The beginning of the tour also starts with an instant hush over the crowd. Because there is a crowd, but blindfolded, you’d think you were all alone. Here you can watch a preview of what is to come, and a summary of the museum, along with words from Otto Frank and excerpts from Anne’s diary. The self-guided tour then winds its way up the stairs onto the second floor where all the main offices for the company where. Here you come to a bookcase with suspect hinges (put on during museum renovation). Pull back the giant bookcase and you are faced with a hole in the wall and a staircase. Climb through the whole and you enter the Secret Annex. These next two floors were the living spaces of the Frank family, and the 4 other companions. Inside, there is writing, encased in glass, where the Frank family measured their growth during the years they were there. There is also a reproduction of the wall in Anne’s room where she hung picture of her favorite actors and actresses of the day. The actual wall has been removed and placed in storage for safe keeping. As you wind your way back down the narrow staircase and into the new part, where you can find a tourist trap cafe, you pass by what I thought was one of the most touching things. You pass by an actual Academy Award Oscar. Next to it is a plaque the explains that the Oscar is from Shelley Winters, who won Best Supporting Actress for the movie. The story goes that Otto Frank visited the set during the filming of The Diary of Anne Frank and Ms. Winters told him, “Mr. Frank, if I win an Oscar for my role in this movie, I’m going to bring it to you and to the Anne Frank Huis.” He replied with, “Well that would be a very hard thing to do, wouldn’t it?” And she then said, “Yes, it would. That’s why I’ll keep it for a while, and then bring it to you.” She did win the Oscar, and there it was. That’s probably the closest I’ll ever be to an Oscar, but it was really touching. After a quick stop in the museum store to buy my own copy of her diary (I had finished my book club book), we headed out. Back to the hostel we went for a shower and then to hunt down some dinner.

After dinner, and a brisk walk back to the hostel, we settled down for night two in our pig pen. (No pun intended as we stayed at the Flying Pig Hostel Downtown).