Overnight a cold change has come across. We had a small shower of rain last night, and this morning a chilly wind is whipping around. (Greg: Today was the 1st of September and autumn in Holland is nothing if not efficient.)
But we woke to a lovely breakfast that Maria had laid out. Boiled eggs with little red poker dot egg covers on top to keep them warm before we came down; warm bread; jams; cheese; cold meats; Netherlands Nutella substitute; and of course chocolate sprinkles for bread. There was also coffee and tea brewed and orange juice.
After all this we made a day-trip into Amsterdam. We caught a bus to Haarlem, and then a train to Amsterdam. It was a terrific opportunity to do some window watching. The houses between Noordwijk and Haarlem seem quite affluent. Through the large front windows on the front of all the houses, you can see all the way straight through to the backyard ( there is usually another large window on the other side of the room). Each window is almost like an expression of the house, and the people living there. There are large vases of flowers in some windows, statues in others, or decorative pots – a huge range of personal objects carefully arranged. Most of the rooms behind the windows were also beautifully arranged.
Once we got into Amsterdam, we acquired sandwiches, and went for an hour cruise around the canals in the inner city. (Once again took way too many photos.) The boat went past many of the main “attractions” in the tourism lingo, so it gave us a good orientation for where to wander later. The thing that stood out the most for me was the sheer number of bikes: in a huge parking lot at the station, tied to all the bridges, lamposts, signs, trees, anything else vertical. Other than that the canal front streets seems very laid back and quite green and beautiful.
Afterwards we went for a walk towards the main museums to see what the entrance cost was. After establishing they were both more expensive than going into the Louvre, we put them into the “next time” basket.
What I did want to do was visit the Anne Frank House. So Greg went off and got himself a beer, and I paid the €7.50 to go in. It was a touching thing to do after having read the book. The secret apartment (at the top of stairs so steep they nearly are better described as a ladder) where they hid was like walking into a two-person apartment. Tiny. Hardly a place you can imagine 8 people existing. It has no furniture in it, as it was Otto Frank’s wish that it was not refurnished – the German soldiers removed all the furniture when they raided the apartment in 1944. On the wallpapered walls however, you can still see the pencil marks recording how much Anne and her sister grew while they were in hiding, and all of the posters Anne pasted to the walls to decorate.
For me the thing that has the most impact is the blacked out windows. Knowing that there is a beautiful day outside (the wind had dropped and the sky cleared), and not being able to let in the light to the small dim rooms was frustrating even in the short time I was in there. Let alone having to tolerate it in quiet for years.
After this we packed up our things (well i picked up greg from the pub canal side) and headed home. Having decided that this was definitely a place we could visit for a much more extended period of time. Also the fields of flowers were still just as beautiful when we got back to Noordwijk.
Alice
