Our first stop was the Anne Frank House. Fortunately, we were early arriving and were able to start our tour earlier than scheduled. It's a museum of sorts now, and has been re-done since I was there in 2000...for the better. Now there are videos of Anne's father (Otto Frank) and others who knew her, especially Meis Piep,...talking about Anne. The rooms are unchanged...which is how her father wanted the museum. He wanted all the rooms to remain bare. Anne's room still has the pictures she had put on the wall, but there is plexiglass covering them.
Lunch was at a restaurant, one that was probably my favorite of the entire trip, called Wagamamas. They had a special People to People menu...Japanese food! It was delicious...in my opinion!Our next activity was a cruise on the Amstel River. A middle school P2P group was also suppose to be with us, but fortunately, they weren't...so we were the only ones on the boat.
Rijksmuseum...Unfortunately, this wasn't on our agenda. It is an awesome museum!
Hard Rock Cafe - Amsterdam
Bicycles are everywhere...what you can't see in this photo (above) is the 3-story bicycle parking garage! The garage AND all these bikes... amazing!
Notice the hooks - large hooks - at the tops of the houses. These are used for bringing furniture in and out of homes/offices. Buildings are so tall and so narrow, furniture can't be taken up the narrow staircases, thus the hooks! The windows, which are large, are taken out, and the furniture is hoisted up and in (or out) the windows!
Costa Diamonds was next on the itinerary. We learned about the 4 C's of diamonds...cut, clarity, carat, and ... Ok, now my mind is blank... what's the 4th C?
We went into a locked room where some diamonds were taken out for us to view. The presenter compared different cuts and sizes for us. Then, those who didn't want to shop, or look at diamonds in jewelry, were let out of the room... it was then relocked, and out came the diamond jewelry.
On our 'walking tour' - which didn't happen because of Amber getting us turned around and trying not to be late for dinner - we passed the flower market. Some of our delegates took advantage of this to buy some souvenirs for home - bulbs!
Seeing as this was July 8th, it was Adam's birthday! Poor Adam...last year we were in London on his birthday...and this year, Amsterdam! I asked him where he thought he'd be next year!
We arrived at the restaurant for dinner... and we acted very innocent in regard to Adam and his birthday. The dinner was good...and for dessert we had poffertjes...oh my! These were like little puffy pancakes. Delicious! ( I have now downloaded various recipes for these and have ordered a special pan for making them!) After dinner, out came Adam's birthday dessert... fireworks and all!
Once we had celebrated Adam's birth and finished our meal, we ventured back to the hotel. Again, we had the conference room for the evening...where we had our Trivia Challenge. The questions are ones I had been collecting throughout the trip. Amber had picked up some snacks and Dustin started in asking the questions. The delegates put themselves into groups...and we started.
The questions completed, the scores tallied... and our winning group:
Congratulations to all!It was an amazing journey through four different countries...what an experience! After all the questions reviewing a fraction of what we had learned, after having some time to hang out, visit, collect emails and phone numbers, and reminders from your fearless leaders to PACK... it was time for our last bedcheck!
I hope you all enjoyed your experience...and I hope you're ready to travel again someday!
