Anne Frank & Heineken

Anne Frank & Heineken

This morning we woke up early to drive into Amsterdam and visit the Anne Frank House. Since pretty much all of Europe is on spring holiday recess I had a terrible time reserving tickets online for this museum. Midweek we are moving to a hotel in Amsterdam and I was trying to visit the museum then, when we’d already be there instead of when we were staying at the campground 40 minutes outside Amsterdam. Weeks before our trip I tried to get tickets for when we would be in the city, but they had already sold out. They do sell tickets at the door as well, but I’ve been told the lines for that get really long real fast and you spend hours waiting to get in. Not with a three year old, no thanks! This meant we had to just suck it up and drive in one day from the campground. I was very glad we did this because the line was down the street and around the corner to buy tickets, I heard about a four hour wait. We bypassed the entire line, went right to the special side door for advance tickets and got right in. Colin did pretty well, we tried to explain to him in terms he could understand about the Frank family and why this place was important. It was an amazing piece of history to visit.

Next we went to The Heineken Experience to see (and taste!) how the beer is made. The Experience is in the old brewery building, where the company started. Now they have a large brewery on the outskirts of Amsterdam where the beer is actually produced, and the old factory has been turned into a fun, interactive museum of sorts. They have all kinds of fun things to see and play with there. Shelby was in heaven since Heineken is one of his favorite beers. Even Colin had a blast. After that we found a Starbucks and headed back out of town to our campground to pack up camp.