Amsterdam, Day 3

Anne Frank House

Red Light District

the Anne Frank Museum entrance

 

In that square or open area is where you enter the Anne Frank Museum.  Buy your tickets  for a reserved slot long before you arrive in Amsterdam.  You don't want to be the tourists who miss it because they didn't do their research.  It happens.

Really enjoyed the tour today.  This is not the museum entrance, but I believe it's the front entrance to the warehouse that had the secret annex where Anne, her family and another Jewish family hid from the Nazis for two years, with the help of some Dutch.  Eventually the Gestapo and Amsterdam police found this hide-away and the Franks were sent away to death camps.  Very moving museum, and quite a remarkable girl.

This was a beer exactly like a Heineken, just a different brand, according to our waitress.  Was good....but I am no beer expert.

Perhaps the best mussels and chips (fries) I have ever had.  Thanks to my cousin for reminding me to be sure to try mussels in Amsterdam.  Food overall (seafood might be the exception) seems a lot cheaper in Amsterdam than in France and Italy, but the quality is very high, and the seafood we tried was the best of our three stops.  The most surprising aspect of Amsterdam was how good the food was.  Don't believe all you hear!

I am pretty sure this is cod.  Sole and salmon are also popular with the locals.

It was nice to see Prince all over town.  I later researched and found out that he loved tour stops in Amsterdam.  We ended up not going to the Paisley Park "road exhibit," but I was not going to pass up these photo ops.

Supposedly these are the best fries in Amsterdam.  And god, they have fabulous ones all over the city.  We just ran out of time, or were already full when we walked by.  I hope we don't live to regret not trying these.

I jokingly said that I opened my own pub, and that I would add an apostrophe once it made some money!

Not exactly sure if this is the guy, but one day we were harassed by a panhandler who was on a scooter.  We were walking, with purpose, to get somewhere.  I looked ahead of me, and there was this black man on a scooter, and he was wheeling up to people, asking for something.  I travel a lot, as you know, so I think I am pretty perceptive in situations like this.  And again, we were going somewhere!  What I noticed was that the people he approached had the "WTF?!? look" on their faces.  This guy was hitting up people for money, as simple as that.  I said, "Kade, don't look at him, don't speak, just keep walking."  And so we walked around this scene, towards another road.  The guy on the scooter chases us down, and is almost up with us.  All the while, he is saying out loud, "Hey, Hey.  Let me ask you something."  We stared straight ahead and kept walking.  Yet he was persistent.  After his third attempt or so, he was like, "You won't talk to me, but you're walking with that China-woman."  We still didn't look at him, and stayed on the move.  But when he said that, I thought to myself, "That's kinda funny."  Later, after the guy had given up and driven away, Kade and I laughed together.  A few take-aways:  Here's this guy, black and riding a scooter, clearly harassing people.  And he had concluded that we spoke his language, despite the fact we didn't talk with him, and didn't look at him.  Kade could have simply spoken Thai only.  And I could have been Russian or French, and not understood any English.  This guy also brought race into the matter, by mentioning Kade being a China-woman, and by doing so implying we weren't talking to him because he was black.  Whereas, there were countless other legitimate reasons to ignore him.  But it's sad to me, that in the climate we're in, so many have to always be victims.  And in one area, it's race.  If all else fails, let's play the race card.  Other ways this can be done, might be when some US tourists go into countries thinking "they don't like us because we're Americans."  So then there's an encounter, and it may be because of what you did.  But after the fact, you spin it to yourself and to others back home to reinforce this preconceived notion that "the world hates us."  Nope, maybe it was you.  Sorry.  We need more nuisance and critical thinking, and more self-awareness.  And yet that's hard to do.  And we could be wrong.  Traveling, though, puts you into situations you may not get into at home.  It tests you, and hopefully you gain something from it.