Sunflowers and The Secret Annex......

We really just mucked around Amsterdam a lot, the markets are definitely worth checking out, especially Waterlooplein, but really the only 2 big touristy things we did there were the Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank's house. Van Gogh was really cool but the museum only had one floor of his work and it was packed. Interesting nonetheless, we saw (for those of you familiar with him) The Bedroom, Irises, Sunflowers, Crows in a Cornfield, The Potato Eaters, and his self portraits to name some of the more well famous ones. (My favourite, Starry Night is privately owned. D'oh!) No matter, it was brilliant to just be able to see his original brushstrokes and one of his original frames (which he painted as well). Anne Frank's house was surreal and my favourite of the two, having always been interested in war literature. Again, it was crowded which took away from the experience but they did a good enough job in presenting it. An interview with her childhood friend told of how, after her sister died in their concentration camp, Anne thought she had no one left in the world and subsequently died 2 days later. This friend felt that if she had known her father was still alive, Anne would have held on and lived. Which means her diary would never have been published. The diary itself was the highlight of the whole house/museum, written all those years ago in another world that's hard to believe ever existed.