Final post!
Our Lord of the Attic: 17th-century Catholic Church built on the top three floors of a canal house during the 1660s. It is a rare remaining example of a "schuilkerk", or "secret church" in which Catholics and other religious dissenters from the seventeenth century Dutch Reformed Church, unable to worship in public, held services.
The first two floors were where the family lived, and the top floors were the church, and where the priest lived.
(Last photo is tough to see but there was a window in the basement where you could see the original wooden beams that held up the building)
Anne Frank House & Museum
No photos allowed inside, but this is the outside, and a diagram of the building, particularly the 2nd & 3rd floor Secret Annex. I encourage you to visit their website where you can take a virtual tour. The virtual tour shows the rooms as they would have been at the time. In person, the rooms are all empty, but for some of the things on the walls.
Remembrance Day & Liberation Day
I happened to be in Amsterdam for Remembrance Day, a day to remember the victims of war and reflect on the meaning of freedom, and Liberation Day, marking the end of the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands in 1945.
The night before Remembrance Day, I happened upon a peaceful rally regarding the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Liberation Day, Dutch flags flew everywhere, and free meals were abundant, including many locations giving out free cans of soup (to be shared and enjoyed with others).
That evening, there were dance parties all over the city, including one just next to the Anne Frank House (just up the street from my Air BnB). That square is home to a statue of Anne Frank (covered for some reason, so no photo), and the Homomonument, which commemorates all gay men and women who have been persecuted because of their sexual orientation.
Luggage... airport... the end. :( But I got to have lunch in a teacup, and peruse the Amsterdam airport library!
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