Amsterdam Again

This is our second visit to Amsterdam. Amsterdam was constructed around 4 main canals that are semicircular (half of target bulls eye). The distinctive narrow houses with triangle and other shaped facades were built along both sides of the canals. We visited a couple of the canal houses on our first visit and we visited two on this visit. We’re staying at a hotel near the two main museums, the Rijks museum and the van Gogh art museum.

On Thursday after we greeted Janet and Jeff and Barbara and Jake arriving at the hotel at about noon we visited a canal house.

Fancy canal house that was two plots wide

Canal house interior was built to impress guests

Canal bridges are not very high

Dinner together (all six of us) at a local cafe on Thursday 

On Friday morning, we visited a second canal house that we had also visited 10 years ago. This canal house was the home of art collectors who had no children and so they left the house to the city of Amsterdam as a museum in about 1920. The house was used as an art institute and during the war by resistance groups to print false ration cards and identification cards for people hiding from the Nazis. There was lots of resistance in the Netherlands to the Nazis. They were occupied and oppressed, and most people wanted no part of the Nazi empire that was spreading through all of Europe. 

Judy on a canal bridge with bright flowers 

Judy in front of yellow china cabinet

Beautiful bedroom in the canal house

Another room full of furniture and art

Because we were on a late schedule, we made sandwiches at breakfast and ate our lunch in front of the Van Gogh Museum that we were scheduled to visit at 2 pm. The other two couples had visited the museum in the morning, and we saw them as they were going to the tram to go to the Anne Frank house. We crossed paths in Amsterdam.

Who have you crossed paths with lately?