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Published: August 15th 2009
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Travelling to Amsterdam took ages, We had a good journey but it seemed to take a long time in the truck. Once we got near Amsterdam it started to go wrong. Firstly we got stuck in a housing estate - my fault entirely but the estate roads seemed to go on and on. After that we arrived at a couple of different campsites only to find that they were really crowded or completely full. We rejected the naturist option by a unanimous vote!. Having no luck with the campsites we decided that a hotel would be sensible. After travelling through Harlem and out the other side we arrived past the CORUS plant (just like home) to a Holiday Inn that was dirty and horrible. It was getting really late by this time and various suggestions including sleeping on the truck were bandied about. Finally we decided to retrace our steps to the Marriott that we had passed about 43 hours ago and eventually arrived there about 11pm.
The next day we travelled into Amsterdam. The route there was eventful as we got on the bus and the train without seeming to be able to pay. Our cards didn’t work in
Windmill
Complete with Goat the ticket machines and the information line told us to get on the train and speak to the conductor. This we did but she then tried to charge us 35 euros each for the tickets. Eventually she let us off and we arrived at Amsterdam Central station none the poorer than when we had left the hotel.
The main focus on the visit to Amsterdam was to go to Anne Franks house. Smarty had done a lot of project work on it last term and she was determined to see where Anne had hidden. This is what she has written:-
The next day we went to Anne franks house, this is were 8 people hid in a secret annex for 2 years while across the street bombs dropped and people got taker away for being a Jew. Anne and the rest of the 8 people were all Jews but only one of them made it through the hiding, being found out and the concentration camps, that one was Otto Frank the father of Anne frank. He was the one who published Anne’s diary and made the museum about there house. The rest of the 8 people were Margot
Family 4
Hope the Sea level doesnt rise too much more frank - (sister of Anne) Edith frank - (mother of Anne) Otto frank - (father of Anne) but there wasn’t just the frank family but the van Pel family as well. There were Peter van Pel - (son of Mr. & Mrs. van Pel) Agust van Pel - (mother of Peter) Herrman van Pel - (father of Peter) along with all of them was one other person he was a dentist and he got invited way after the others were hiding.
It became clear once in the house how they had managed to hide for so long but the conditions were clearly very cramped.
Once we had spent a couple of hours there we had some lunch and Farty set us off to walk to the Van Gogh Museum - aren’t we being cultured. It didn’t last long though - after about 10 mins most of the Family 5 had had enough. The Sunflowers were really lovely though and I enjoyed spending some time just looking at his different styles - I didnt realize just how short his painting period was - 10 years only.
When we got back to the hotel we had Pizza in the room and all watched a film together.
After the disaster of not finding accommodation when we arrived in Amsterdam, the next day we decided not to leave the hotel until we had found somewhere to camp that night. I found a small campsite on a farm north of Amsterdam in the polders. It was lovely and the family were very friendly. In fact after the generally unsmiling faces we had encountered over the last couple of days it was great to meet some genuinely friendly folk.
We camped near Medemblik which is a lovely port and would have stayed longer if we had not had a rendez vous arranged with an apartment in Paris.
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