Wish You Were Here: A whirlwind Amsterdam trip — complete with wrong museum
A family trip for a San Jose trio -- a middle schooler, her aunt and grandmother -- took in Amsterdam's sights, including an unexpected museum.
Our intrepid readers have traveled across the globe in recent months, sharing their adventures as they discovered the temples of Thailand, cooked paella in Barcelona, and explored glaciers in Alaska.
Now a San Jose family is sharing their tales from a recent trip to Amsterdam. Read on for details, then find more travel inspiration at www.mercurynews.com/tag/wish-you-were-here/.
Wish You Were Here
NETHERLANDS: This spring, San Jose Middle School student Blaze Bentz took an 18-day tour of London, Amsterdam and Berlin accompanied by her grandmother, San Jose resident Polly Ferguson, and her aunt, Abby Lineberry. “We went to the wrong museum!” says Polly. “After an emotional visit to the exceptionally well done Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the plan was to have a Dutch pancake and then go to the Resistance Museum, but due to a lack of meticulous advance planning and unfamiliarity with the language, we ended up at the Rijksmuseum!
“The Rijksmuseum is an impressive museum. We saw a lot of Rembrandts, Van Gohgs and Vermeers, which is not a bad thing, but we wanted to go to the — we now know — Verzetsmuseum focused on the Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation during World War II.
TRAVEL TIPS: “Book the Anne Frank House in advance! Tickets go on sale six weeks out and sell out within hours. Abby was up at 2 a.m. six weeks before the trip, with her finger on the ‘buy’ button to ensure we had tickets. The Pancake Club serves delicious pancakes/crepes with outdoor seating overlooking a canal. Tickets for the Rijksmuseum can be bought in advance or at the door, but tickets at the door are time stamped and you might have to wait an hour or more before entering the museum. Tickets to the much smaller and much less famous Verzetsmuseum can be purchased at the door for immediate entry.”
Join the fun! Send a photo of yourself on your latest adventures — local, domestic or international — to jburrell@bayareanewsgroup.com. Tell us where you are, who everyone is and where they’re from, and share a travel tip or two to help fellow readers go there, too.