Thanks Anne

On Tuesday, we traveled on Ryanair flight to Amsterdam for 3 days. Since we flew a budget airline, we flew into Einhoven instead of Amsterdam and we took an hour and a half bus ride to Amsterdam. The weather was chilly but since it was sunny and the sun was beaming into the bus and creating a greenhouse effect and it was at least 90 degrees in the bus.

We finally got to Amsterdam's city center, bought tram tickets, and then ventured to our hostel. We got settled in and then went back to the center to grab a bite to eat. Amsterdam is not like Florence where there is a variety of restaurants that have very different prices, Amsterdam is very expensive and everywhere you go is expensive. We had a traditional dutch meal where I had duck served with a port's sauce and vegetables.

The next day we went to the Van Gogh Museum where I was yelled at for taking pictures of the paintings(but it was well worth it). It was incredible to see the descriptions of the paintings and read about his life. We then were total tourists and had to take pictures with the "I AMsterdam" sign, where we climbed the letters and we annoyed that people photobombed our picture. We went to the Heineken brewery which was very interactive and probably the most fun any of us had in Amsterdam.

My favorite part of the trip was going to the Anne Frank house. We waited in line for an hour and a half which is nothing compared the lines at cedar point. We finally got in and started the tour. You start in the house next to Anne's which was converted to be a museum. We finally got into the actual house and it was surreal. Knowing that millions of people have visited this house because a teenage girl wrote a diary is unbelievable. The stairs we had to climb was a wall with stairs on it, it was so incredibly steep, you were face to face with the stairs. We saw Anne's living room and bedroom. The bedroom still had the pictures she hung up on the wall, something that's familiar to teenagers all around the world. I was able to keep it together until I saw a video of her father, Otto, speaking about her and it crushed me. I fought the tears back but they still fell.

Not even the canal cruise of the city the next day compared to the Anne Frank house and it will be a long time before somethings makes me feel that way again.