anne frank house

By -
the only place i bought a ticket in advance was the anne frank house.  the tickets seem to let people in at 20 minute intervals.  one of the girls in the hostel recommended going late afternoon.  she said that there was not a line then.  so, it may be similar to the case of the van gogh museum.  this was one of the few museums that opened at 9 and it seems like getting there then would make sense.  there was a huge difference in the line between 940 when i went in and 1030 when i came out.

the museum is a very well guided tour.  basically follow the person in front of you.  the pamphlet you receive when you walk in was very informative.  all notes of the museum were basically in the brochure that they give you when you walk in.  it was difficult to hear the audio at times since they had little headphones with a bunch of languages in each room.  you could hear the audio through the headphones that were not in use. 

the museum was very well done although seemed a little lacking at times in extra details or additional information.  obviously, the house was ransacked so very little is left from that, but would have liked more context around the holocaust and what happened to her father afterwards.  the museum was very focused on anne frank and amsterdam jews.  seeing the house felt like a movie.  it did match my imagination.  walking through the bookcase was eery. 

one thing i would have liked addressed was if anne's father tried to get them out, which i am sure he did.  what happened with that.  also i would have liked more info about how he decided on where they would hide, how long it took to put it together, etc.

it is definitely a must-stop in amsterdam.  it is currently expanding, so i will be interested to see how that changes the layout and flow of the museum.

time in museum: 1 hr
times visited: 1
overall: A-
Location: Anne Frank House, 1000 AS Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cincinnati Art Museum

By -
Image
A couple of weekends ago, I dashed into the Cincinnati Art Museum to see the Treasures of the Spanish World exhibit.  The exhibit was created by the Hispanic Society and very c learly, the descriptions were written by the Hispanic Society.  The exhibit spanned the typical exhibit hall and then also one of the other halls sometimes used for exhibit too.   With my annual membership, I had free admission to the exhibit. The exhibits starts much further back than expected, which if I had read the description closely, I would have known.  It focuses on the holistic Iberian peninsula.  The exhibit is set up chronologically and has a mixture of art mediums.  The exhibit had descriptions of the art in both English and Spanish.  As i mentioned earlier, the descriptions were definitely written by the Hispanic Society as a few of them were quite complimentary about their collection and its possessions.   So I did end up taking a bunch of photos during the exhibit. A miniature of a cr
Read more

lower east side tenement museum

By -
to take advantage of the beautiful day in new york city, i thought i would try to take the lower east side tenement museum walking tour. i hustled down there and got there right in the nick of time. i have been to the lower east side museum for their tenement tours, but wanted to try this 1 1/2 hr walking tour, immigrant soles: a neighborhood walking tour . i saw some areas of the lower east side which i had never seen before. the tour guide was very good; he did a great job pointing out the interesting architecture making us think about what certain architecture features might mean. for example, a building with only three windows, what does that mean? answer: that it was meant to have a single family live there as opposed to twenty, since there was no partition splitting the building in two. he also brought up some of the different political tensions running through the LES that had not been mentioned in some of the other tours. perfect for a beautiful summer day. times v
Read more

Morgan Library

By -
Image
I was in a suburb of New York City two weeks ago and had to get to the Morgan Library .  It has been a number of years since I have been able to make it there and it is probably my favorite place in New York.  This aptly was visit #10! It is peaceful and full of light in the museum.  It was busy in there, but still quiet.  I continue to love how elegantly the museum meshed contemporary with the traditional elements. Not sure if you can see it, but the grates are full of birds I focused on my visit on three major exhibits: John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal , Verdi: Creating Otello and Falstaff-Highlights from the Ricordi Archives , and the main library wing . I really like the John Singer Sargent oil painting portraits.  He is quite well known for these paintings that he completed in the early portion of the 1900s including many of the souls and their children.  He painted so many famous people of that time period.  He ended up switching to charcoal because it was f
Read more