Amsterdam - Day 3 - Anne Frank/Royal Palace

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Geo: 52.3667, 4.86643

The weather today has been quite variable. It can change from sunshine to a downpour in 15 minutes. Today was not too bad except for the 15-20 minutes we spent huddled under some construction scaffolding.

We had tickets for the Anne Frank House for 10 AM. It was about a half hour walk to get there. The attraction is very well done. Audio headsets fill you in on various areas if the house and you do access the room they hid in. The exterior has been redone so it doesn't look like what you would expect.

We decided to for to Dam square and do a walking tour that we have on our phones. However that was preceded by a visit to the Royal Palace. The building was originally built as a city hall. It is a very impressive building.

Lunch was a couple of open faced sandwiches and beer. Locals for the most part are very fit - likely a combination of good food and exercise. There 800,000 people and a similar number of bikes. The advantage here is the land is flat and the road network is designed for bikes.

Our walking tour was the Jordaan neighbourhood. The walking tour we downloaded from the Rick Steve's website. This area begins at Dam square. It is a more well to do area with homes at the time belonging to merchants. This explains further the hooks on the rooftops. The pulleys were attached and goods were lifted to the attic for storage. Now they tend to be used for renovation as well as getting some pieces of furniture into the buildings. I have included a picture of the stairs in this building which are very common. I am not sure if new building codes would allow the steepness.

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Comments

[Kim Edgar]

Beautiful photos of the Palace! Happy Mothers Day from all the way back in Canada, eagerly looking forward to all of your posts onward! Lots of love!