Mom Taken Away Against her Will

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Geo: 52.3738, 4.89095

We'll get to that shortly. The alarm awakens us at 6am and Karen gets up to start more organizing. She can shuffle that stuff all around as much as she wants and it won't get any lighter. I get up at 6:30 and put the final touches on our load of stuff. I put two suitcases out in the hallway with their colored tags on them and when I go to put the other two out, the first ones are gone already. They must want us off this boat now. We have until 9 to be out of the room but they will allow us to hang out in the lounge until 11 or so. I don't mind getting to our hotel early but not 9am. We have a nice breakfast, clear out our backpacks from the room, turn in our keys and evaluations and clear up the bill. All is good and we return to the lounge for two hours while I write more blog and Karen visits with others waiting for the same.

Our taxi shows up, we load in and head to our hotel. Our ship is docked behind the Centraal Train Station and our hotel is in front of it. Despite the close distance it's €10 to get there. Our room is ready so we haul our stuff there, check in and then we head out to walk around Amsterdam, staying close to hotel. We stop at McDonald's for a Big Mac. That's right. That's what she wanted. Then we window shopped a little more and returned to the hotel.

At 4:30, we left for the Anne Frank House. I had purchased tickets over a month ago for 5:30pm and I wasn't sure how long it would take to get there on the tram. We took the tram from across the street from the hotel for €5.60 for both of us and we go there in less than 10 minutes. The line was several hundred people long but we walked up a side door, rang the bell and we were in. A little too early but we got in anyway, thanks to a nice attendant. We had a half hour history lesson on their tragic experiences of Anne Frank and then toured the home where she and her family hid out from the Nazis for over 2 years and where she wrote her diary. Very interesting.

Born on June 12, 1929, Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. She and her family, along with four others, spent over two years during World War II hiding in an secret annex of rooms above her father's office in Amsterdam. After being betrayed to the Nazis, Anne, her family, and the others living with them were arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps. In March of 1945, nine months after she was arrested, Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She was fifteen years old.

Since it was first published in 1947 by her father who survived, Anne Frank's diary has become one of the most powerful memoirs of the Holocaust. Its message of courage and hope in the face of adversity has reached millions. The diary has been translated into 67 languages with over 30 million copies sold and movies have been made too.

Before taking the tram back, we stopped at a grocery store and picked up a few things for dinner since we weren't real hungry. Then we took the tram back to Centraal Station. I stepped off the tram with Mom directly behind me but she had trouble swiping her ticket and the tram door closed. I pushed the button from the outside to reopen the door, she from the inside but the door wouldn't open. Suddenly, the tram took off back the way it came going way too fast to catch and carrying Mom and some Chinese tourists behind her that never got off either. I follow the tram to the next stop and greet Mom walking back toward me. She just got off at the next stop since she was familiar with the area and was heading to the hotel. She told me the other Chinese tourists kept swiping their cards and the alarm was going off. Karen told them, "Forget the alarm! Just get off." They spoke no English. She bailed. The tram pulled away, the traveler's frightened faces pressed against the door window, unable to free themselves from a destiny only they would experience. The train pulls away, it's destination, the Twilight Zone.

Anyway, I got carried away. With the fate of those travelers now out of our hands, we ate our yogurt, wrap and cheese. Showers finished, I finished this last blog to be written on our trip. Tomorrow's will be completed at home. We have a free breakfast at 7 and a cab pickup at 7:30am to the airport. Our flight leaves at 10:05 to MSP with a two hour layover and then on to SFO. I'll just pop a few pictures on here and I'm done.

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Photos

A Device for your Shower. Soap Holder, I Think.
Hey, it's Amsterdam.