Amsterdam to Paris

Our train for Paris didn’t leave today until 3:15pm, so we had lots of time to do some more sightseeing before hightailing it to the train station. We woke up around 8am to make sure that we actually got going in time to see some stuff. We had breakfast in the hostel cafeteria which was actually pretty good. They had a Nutella knock-off that definitely would do the trick in a pinch. Checkout was at 10:30am, so after breakfast, we got our packs and had an interesting time fitting them into the lockers provided by the hostel. It took some work, but we got them in there!

We set out to do a little shopping at the cute stores we saw last night but found that the whole town was pretty much dead until 1:00. If we weren’t on a schedule, we’d sure like that a lot! Since we couldn’t get into any of the shops, we made our way to the Anne Frank House. It has been refurnished and designed to be more like a museum. On the walls are quotes from her diary that describe their living situation and how she longed for fresh air. The building was her father’s office. There are several videos that talk about the growth of Nazism and how Anne and her family decided to go into hiding. There is a scale model of their small apartment, complete with furniture and furnishings. Anne’s father, Otto, who survived the concentration camps, asked that the hidden apartment’s rooms and walls be left empty once the building became a museum. There are only small cases throughout the rooms with items from the apartment such as magazines, diary clippings, homework, a siddur and some posters on some of the walls. While walking past their attic near the living room, we could hear the church bells from the adjacent church ringing outside. An exhibit at the end showed where everyone involved with Anne and her story ended up including the others that lived in the attic with the Franks as well as the helpers. The last of the helpers, Miep Giess, recently passed away this past January at age 100. At the very end, there was an interview with Otto Frank where he stated that he knew about Anne’s diary. She would sometimes give it to him to protect at night had said that she wished to have it published some day after the war. After Otto returned from the camps and learned about his family’s fate, he took it upon himself to finally fulfill Anne’s wish to be published. As you exit the museum, you can see the dozens of different languages her diary has been published in. It was a really interesting experience. It’s cool to be going on this amazing trip but this was a sad reminder to be conscious of the dark histories several of the places we are visiting have. It's weird to think that all of that happened only a few decades ago.

We then headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and hit the road one mo' time. We hailed a cab about 2 blocks away from our hostel and upon arrival to the train station, learned that it was half the price of our cab ride to the hostel the previous day. Hmmm, live and learn folks. We boarded our train, which was a high speed Thalys, put our bags on the luggage racks and passed out. We now both fully understand everyone's fascination with Thomas the train...or any kind of train because trains... ARE AWESOME. One hour you're in Amsterdam, and in 4 you're in Paris. (In our next post, we'll have another story about why trains are awesome. It may or may not involve a gorilla and a banana. Stay tuned!). Our train however, had a slight malfunction while stopping in Brussels. It was supposed to connect up with another train on the front end, but that train broke down so our train had to re-maneuver and go down another track. It ended up causing us to be an hour late to Paris. Once we got to Paris, we were greeted by the fresh air and Monsieur Dansby! We then headed off together to find our hostel.

We got to our hostel and saw that one of the four beds was already occupied. Shortly after unloading our packs and deciding where to go get dinner we met our roomie, Sara! She had just arrived in Paris from New York and will be studying French here in Paris for the next 2 weeks before heading off to work on a farm in Provence. We invited her to tag along with us to dinner and we all became fast friends! Since we're in Paris, we just had to go eat dinner near the Eiffel Tower, so we did! We even got to see it sparkle! The Eiffel Tower has a light show every hour on the hour that makes it look like it's sparkling! After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and crashed.

We woke up today and did a free tour of Paris... but we'll have more about that as well as gorillas, trains, starving artists and much more all in the next post!

Peace ninjas!

XOXO K&R