Tiptoeing through the Tulips

Apr 23/07

We travelled from Brussels to Amsterdam today. We didn't get in until later in the afternoon, and when we arrived in the city, we had to book our trains on towards Norway for the 25th. Becuase my train pass was dated my first day in Europe, it will expire on the 27th of May, so by the end of that day, we NEED to be in Bergen, Norway, or I'll have to pay a lot in train tickets. We needed to get our night trains booked to be sure we had seats.

After making our train bookings, we headed to the hostel. Amsterdam was a really nice city, much nicer than I ever expected. It was full of gorgeous old buildings, and lovely canals. We dropped off our bags, and headed out to see the Anne Frank House. It was a wonderfully designed museum that showed the horror and fear the family lived in for more than 2 years. The house in which they hid for so long was a warehouse which ran normally during the entire time that the family was in hiding. During the day, they were not allowed to use the water or bathroom facilities as the sounds of water in the pipes would have alerted the warehouse staff to their presence. There was only 4 people who knew that they were living there. Eventually, someone betrayed their presence to the Germans, and the whole family was taken captive. The only one of the 8 people who had been hiding that survived the concentration camp was Otto Frank, Anne's father. The warehouse staff had found the diary after the family was taken and gave it to Otto in 1945. He had it published as a memory of his daughter, who wanted to be a journalist.

We also spent some time shopping and wandering the streets. When it started to get dark, we headed back to the hostel.  We didn't really want to be out and about at night in the Red Light District. But, luckily we were getting far enough North that night was starting to come late, around 8:30 or 9:00.

Apr 24/007

This morning, we were up early to see the Van Gough Museum. It was really amazing, but not as good as I would have liked. None of his really famous pieces (or the ones I really like) from his later time were in the museum. I did enjoy the stuff that was there, despite that.

In the afternoon, we took the train out to Keukenhof Tulip Park. This is an incredible 32 hectare park, all full of bulbs. Tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs were in full bloom. It was a beautiful afternoon. The weather was perfect, cold enough to keep away too many people. The fields around the park are full of tulip fields. That is where the bulbs are grown commercially. So, for as far as you can see from the park, the fields are in bloom, each row a different colour of tulip, making one enourmous rainbow of colour.

There were more different types of tulips than I'd ever imagined possible. There were spikey flowers, and miniture ones, huges ones, some with double blooms, some with feathery edges and some that were colours I've never seen. But they were all beautiful.

Apr. 25/07

When I was reading our guide, I found out that the museum of M.C. Escher was in Den Haag. I was so excited. I have loved Escher's work since I studied it when I was in elementry school. He did some spectacular work in woodprints. I never realised that he had done them all in woodcut prints, not just drawings. It was incredible to see all the prints and the variety of works he had produced. It was possible to see the progression of his art over the years. For those of you who may not be aware of his work, it's got lots of optical illusions and stuff. See link.

http://www.mcescher.com/indexuk.htm

The musuem also had a Virtual Reality display that allowed us to "walk" through a few of his more dizzying pieces of art. I have to say this is my favorite museum of all the ones I've visted in Europe. (And there wasn't even a single piece labled "Madonna and Child".)

We headed back to Amsterdam, and caught the beginning of our night trains. We headed to Koln, and then transfered to our train overnight to Kobenhavn (Copenhagen). It was the first of 2 in a row night trains, and we splurged to get bunks, rather than sleep in seats for two nights. We enjoyed the last of our really nice german trains, with leather seats, and comfy airconditioning.