The Nightwatch Museum and other Amsterdam, Netherlands Things to Do Tips

The Rijksmuseum has a magnificent main edifice - I found it pleasurable just to stand and look up at the top. It's one of those places, like the Louvre, that house so many artistic riches, you can't possibly take it all in with a single visit.

Rembrandt's Nightwatch (which is immense!) and several other Dutch paintings of the same era were quite amazing. The painting just to the left of Nightwatch contained incredible detail on a silver cup, with a tiny reflection on the side of it.

There was an intricately decorated artist's box, complete with little vials of paint, that caught my eye.

The Poppenhuis (dollhouse) was the best part for me. About 5'x3', it had three floors of two rooms each and was built into an elaborate polished wood cabinet with legs and carvings and doors. The dollhouse had windows of stained glass and oiled paper and was fitted out with miniature versions of an affluent 17th century Dutch household: tiny silver place settings and candlesticks, woven carpets. The attic had piles of little boxes, and baskets hanging from the rafters. It made you long to sit down and play with it. From a painting done at the time, you can see what the resident dolls looked like. However, only one -- a baby doll -- survived.

Sidebar: There were two costumed Mongolian musicians playing in the museum's courtyard: a woman plucking a zither-like instrument and a man playing a Mongolian fiddle, a boxy instrument with two strings, played with a bow. He was doing "throat singing," a distinctive Mongolian art where different parts of the body (diaphragm, chest, throat, nasal passages) are used to produce the most amazing sounds.

The month before my visit to the Rijksmuseum, I had been fortunate enough to catch a free show given by Mongolian singers, dancers, and musicians at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. I couldn?t believe that I was able to hear throat singing twice in one month, on different sides of the Atlantic.

Admission 6,50 euros; 18 and under - free.

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Phone: +31-20-6747047
Address: Stadhouderskade 42
Website: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl

We timed our visit to the Anne Frank Huis for late afternoon, about 5:00 p.m., in an attempt to avoid long lines, and it worked: we waited only about 20 minutes to get in.

It was a very sobering experience to be in the Secret Annexe I'd read about when I was a child (Otto Frank's heavily edited version) and when I was a young adult (the unabridged version, a much better, more complete "picture" of Anne). The Annexe was much larger than I had imagined it, taking up two floors of the building. But, of course, there were three families living there, and however large a prison is, it's still a prison.

There were short video loops, photos, exhibits, and excerpts from Anne's diary to look at as you wound your way through the rooms and up and down impossibly narrow, winding staircases. Some of the steps were so small and short that I had to put my feet diagonally onto them, very carefully, to get a foothold. This is a hazard that nobody mentions: elderly or large people should be forewarned. I wonder what the British couple ahead of us did -- they had a baby in a stroller.

I can't imagine living like that, in silent, darkened rooms, for two years, depending on friends for food, and being in constant fear. It brought tears to my eyes when, at the end of the self-tour, I read a passage in which Anne said how grateful she was to God for giving her the ability to write.

I'm so glad that we were able to see the Anne Frank Huis. It's important to be reminded not only of the cruelty that exists in the world, but also of the resilience, and eventual triumph, of the human spirit.

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Phone: +31-20-5567100
Address: Prinsengracht 267
Website: http://www.annefrank.nl