AMSTERDAM

It's 5:30 pm here, and Cathy and I have just returned to Gerry and Christina's house after a long day of hoofing it around this beautiful city. I think it's just sunk in that we're on vacation and have nothing to do but this--hoofing it around beautiful cities--for the next month. We're pretty happy about that.

We arrived in Amsterdam yesterday about 7am, all flights passing without incident, all going according to plan. The flight over from Seattle was very long, and we didn't get to see much as we were up above a pretty thick cloud cover from the time we took off until it turned dark. Early the next morning, though, we did get a magnificent view of pre-sunrise glow on the horizon, a thin ruby-red strip of light that turned the darkness above a metallic purple and the cloud line below a deep blue. It was striking to say the least.

We landed and skated right through customs, no sweat, and hopped the train for Amsterdam Centraal, a smooth ride in a half-empty car. At the main train station we took a tram to the Westermarkt stop, which is about a half-block from where our friends Gerry and Christina live. They've just moved into a beautiful flat on the top floor of an old building on Bloemgracht, facing the canal. It's open and spacious and much larger than either of us had expected, amazing that they live so close to the city center, and yet it's very quiet up here. Cathy's taken some great photos of their place, but I just learned that I have to download the BlogBot software in order to place hosted photos on this site, so unfortunately that isn't gonna happen.

Last night we had a wonderful dinner made by Gerry, after which we sat around their kitchen table talking and drinking wine until the wee hours. This is one of the things we were most looking forward to. Tonight we're having kaas (cheese) fondue, also here at C&G's place, though this time with Christina's sister and their friend John, who we met when we lived in Texas.

Today, after we got up and had breakfast, Cathy and I walked down to the Anne Frank house. (Only about a block and a half from their place!) I'd never been there before, and our hosts encouraged us to check it out. We did, and I have to say that it was a very powerful place. To see the space that these 8 people lived in for so long, to imagine the streets along these canals--these gorgeous walkways and serene canals--occupied by uniformed Nazis who are busy carting off load after load of people, is just beyond my comprehension. The museum itself does a great job of telling their story, from before the time they went into hiding until after Otto Frank, Anne's father, learned that Anne had died in a concentration camp. The museum is set up so you walk through in a linear route, guided by text plaques and photos and small blue arrows. The rooms are tight, the staircases steep and narrow, all oriented in a vertical manner. As we made our way from room to room, we followed Anne Frank's life in hiding, with recorded excerpts from her diaries guiding us through. When we reached the room where she lived, decorated with photos and cut-outs pasted to the walls in an attempt to make the attic feel like a normal girl's bedroom, I felt a sinking, disturbed feeling in my stomach, trying to imagine what it must have been like for a mere kid to experience this--and not only to experience it, but to record such deep, analytical thought, betraying a too-acute understanding of what exactly she was going through. Though it was a pretty low-key museum, very basic in its layout and intent, it spurred powerful, deep response from both of us and everyone else who was there at the time.

After the museum we walked the streets for a few hours, had a picnic of bread and cheese and some roast beef on a bench along the canal, poked our heads in shops and ogled the locals, and then stopped and got some wine and bread for tonight's dinner. And now here we are, drinking coffee and talking around the table, getting ready for another night of imbibement and conversation. It's very nice to have these friends here, being able to come back to this place instead of a hotel room, hanging out with these people who we see not nearly often enough. We'll be here through Saturday, when we travel north to Emmen to visit Luit and Marian, a pair of lovely Dutch giants who we met on our honeymoon in Vietnam. We'll stay with them for a day and a night, then we'll come back here until Tuesday morning when we set off for Portugal.