After a magnificent Hilton breakfast, we started our day at the Anne Frank house. I know this was an emotional experience for quite a few of our delegates...especially those who have read her diary, who have studied the holocaust. The museum is so well done...the originals of most everything...although the rooms are mostly bare. Climbing the staircases, seeing the bookshelf, the tree she watched... walking the canals of Amsterdam, realizing what atrocities went on...it can be overwhelming.
Walking through the city, we had to stop a few minutes after Jane got marked by a pooping bird...who must have eaten an incredible amount before letting loose on her forehead, her hair, the back of her jacket, the side of her jacket and even into her pocket. "Gross" doesn't do it justice!
Ever since my first trip to Amsterdam in 2000, I have been fascinated with these hooks...(under the white rectangle)...these hooks are used to hoist furniture up and in through windows. The homes are tall and narrow...so the stairs are too narrow for furniture.
The flower market is a popular part of Amsterdam and we had some time to explore it. We watched part of a football (soccer) game being played in the sand in the middle of town...as we made our way to WamaMama...where we had lunch. Outside the restaurant (in the same square as The Hard Rock Cafe), there was a giant life-size chess board where some of our delegates played.
Notice the hands of the clock represent the months...I think!
In the flower market....
Photos from the river cruise...
From there, we headed to our cruise on the Amstel River. Amsterdam is amazing from the water, meandering through the canals, seeing the homes on land and the homes on the water from a different angle. The bikes...oh my...there are so many bicycles, you just cannot imagine. I had read before that there are about 6 million people in the Netherlands...and 5 million bikes. From the cruise, we passed a 4 level parking garage for bicycles only...it holds about 4000 bikes. There are bikes locked to anything you can lock a bike to...they are all over the bridges. I had said before we left, that in Amsterdam I was usually concerned by delegates getting run over by bikes. This was true this journey too! How many of us were honked at by people on bikes? A LOT! It's hard to remember to watch for them because it's so foreign to us. Bicycle lanes are everywhere.
This is the Intercontinental Amstel Hotel. It opened in 1867. I'm not sure why People to People didn't book us here. A Junior Suite for 2 people is only 446 euro a night. If you want to stay in a Royal Suite, it's only 3,231 euro a night (for 2 people)! Click the name of the hotel and it'll take you to the website - in case you would like to book a suite!
After our last dinner together, it was time to return to the hotel and begin to figure out how to get everything home. About 8 p.m., we all met in a conference room with our journals. Everyone passed their journals around and people wrote a memory or a positive thought about each person we had just spent an amazing 18 days in Europe with...
The memories...I hope and pray that each person went home after having the time of their life...having made some new life-long friends. As a leader of 7 years with People to People, this has been one of the best delegations I've taken. We weren't without some incidents, but they were minor for the most part. Ebba, our delegation manager, was extraordinary!
I'll leave this post with our laugh fest we had together on the coach:
Wow...it's the end of Day 17!
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