Day One: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Saturday/Sunday

We left Colorado Springs for Minneapolis on Saturday. Along the way, we realized we had left our guidebooks (and a few other things) in the Jeep. The first of many frustrations! In Minneapolis, with a nice long layover, we took the tram to the Mall of America to a Borders and picked up new ones.

After the long flight from Minneapolis, Jared and I arrived in Amsterdam the "next day" (Sunday) for a long (6 hour) layover. We were tired, but excited to be in a new country. We had decided to take advantage of the layover to do some sightseeing. I had read the Diary of Anne Frank a few weeks before and was anticipating seeing the secret annex where she and her family hid from the Nazis. After some frustration with getting from the airport to the train station and trying to find a bus downtown, we decided to check out the Tourist Information center. Some folks from Britain heard we were attempting to see the house and they told us the line was about three hours long. We didn't have three hours, so we made the 20 minute walk to the house and simply stood outside for a while. I was disappointed, but it was cool just to see it.






As you might expect, Amsterdam is jam-packed with canals. It was a beautiful spring day and boats were out tooling up and down the waterways.






Here is the door to the office complex where Anne Frank's secret annex was located. It was up the stairs and hidden behind a bookcase.






The streets were crowded as we made our way back to the train station, then on to the airport to catch our flight for Geneva, Switzerland.