So, this past weekend, my housemates, my boyfriend, and I headed off to Holland for the day. We wanted to get to Edam, a city of about 7,000 residents known for its cheese. There isn't a lot to see in Edam, but Wikipedia (yes, yes, I know...) said that it was a great place to see "Old Holland" with its windmills and canals. (And I was hoping, little girls in pigtails and wooden shoes.) From what we understood, it should take about five hours to arrive in Edam.
However, 6 hours after leaving the Paris area, we were still weaving our way through traffic jams and driving around construction sites. After about 6 and a half hours (also including a brief site-seeing trip to Gent, Belgium), we arrived in Amsterdam. None of us had really wanted to see Amsterdam, considering all the less-than-positive commentary I've heard on the city. Red Light district? No thanks. Drug capital? Again, not so much.
But upon arriving in Amsterdam, the four of us were exhausted and agreed that we should stay in the city and not try to venture any farther.
And Amsterdam very pleasantly surprised us. With its canals, its sun-soaked streets, its bicycles and gorgeous fashion, we were all wowed.
One of the most surreal moments, however, came only about an hour before we had to head back to Paris. One of my housemates, Corrie, had found a tourist map on the group, and when she opened it, we found a conversation bubble pointing to a street saying, "Where the Frank family hid during World War II." So, the four of us plotted a way to get to this place, and off we went.
How strange seeing Anne Frank's Secret Annexe. It was a place I'd read about since I was about 14. We saw the attic room with the window where Anne and Peter would go in the mornings to see the sun. We saw the office room where the annexe's 8 inhabitants sneaked down that night. We saw the board game Peter received for his birthday. And then, we saw Anne's diary--Kitty--and the composition books she used after the diary was filled. We saw the postcards and pictures of actresses and royalty she'd pasted on her wall. And we cried our way through the museum. It was absolutely heart-wrenching. And yet, what an incredible experience.
Some things are hard to see. But some things really have to be seen.
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