Amsterdam Day 3: Rainy Haarlem

We had a really fantastic plan for Monday. We were going to take the train to Haarlem (yes, the neighborhood in NYC was named after this Dutch town), rent bikes, and then bike to Hillegom, through the tulip fields, to the largest garden in the world, Keukenhof. We set out early and bought breakfast in the train station to eat on the train. About five minutes before our train pulled into Haarlem, we hit a solid curtain of rain and watched our well thought out plans literally be washed away. After securing two umbrellas from a barbershop in the Haarlem train station for the bargain price of 5.40 euros apiece, we ventured out into some serious precipitation. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who decided to forgo biking that day:

In addition to being Douwe's home town, Haarlem is famous for it's courtyard gardens, most of which are open to the public. We went and checked out a couple, before we realized that hypothermia was setting in.

When Sonia and I were intermittently laughing and on the verge of tears, Brian decided it was time to navigate to somewhere dry, so we headed for the town's church. It was really just *huge*! It also had a bathroom inside and a Foucault Pendulum, which deserves extra points from my perspective.

We were a little wet from our walk:

Outside the church was an open air flea market, which we ventured into once the rain let up. We then found a nearby department store and purchased lunch and some dry clothes. That mission accomplished, it was time to head back to Amsterdam to see the Ann Frank House.

The Ann Frank Museum pretty much always has a line out front from what we've heard from our local friends. We decided to just brave the line and wait, and it only took about 20-25 minutes. Once inside, you are lead through a series of rooms that once made up the store front of Otto Frank, Ann's father. Then, up a narrow staircase into a sort of landing. Off to the side is the hinged bookcase that hid the secret entrance to the apartments that the Frank family used as a hideout during WWII.

Also in the museum are the actual diary found by employees of Otto Frank and given to him after he returned from the extermination camp following the end of the war.

After the museum, it was getting close to time to catch our night train, so we sat at a cafe for one last drink by the canal, then took a four person self portrait by Dam square, one of the central meeting places in Amsterdam.