Van Gogh Drew Me Back to Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
When I asked Shannon where she’d like to travel, she mentioned two things: Germany and the Anne Frank House. I chose Amsterdam because I thought it would be a good introduction to European travel for her and because I wanted to revisit the Van Gogh Museum.
I tried to book the Anne Frank House for the beginning of our trip but, even though I jumped online as soon as the sales window opened, we had to wait until Day 4.
Coming out of the train station in Amsterdam, I could see the busy walkways and canals and tourist centers. It all looked just as I remembered from 17 years ago. It was threatening rain, and our plan was to find a “hop on/hop off” boat tour and make our way to the museum sector.
When we bought tickets for the boat tour, the young guy selling the tickets insisted with a wink that he heard me say Shannon was 14, not 15, and he gave me the discount on her ticket. The boat was also just as I remembered, with windows on the sides that pop open. They handed out earphones to plug into a console on the wall to access the automated narrative. The circle around the city takes two hours if you stay on the boat. We stayed all the way to the next-to-last stop, the museum district.
Stepping off the boat, the first thing you see is the impressive Riksmuseum, home of the Dutch Masters, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh. I wish we’d had time to visit the Riksmuseum, but we walked through the Bicycle Underpass, the tunnel in the middle of the building leading to the back of the museum. There were long, long lines waiting to get in. A guy on an accordion was playing in the passageway. We stopped to listen, and he was so good that I dropped five euros in his bucket.
After meandering through the streets, we found the Anne Frank House. It was nondescript, just part of a block of residential buildings. The Anne Frank tour was moving. It was incredible to see the hidden annex where the family lived for two years. It has been a long time since I read the Diary of Anne Frank, and I hadn’t remembered that, after all that hiding, they were discovered and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anne’s mother died there of starvation, and Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen and died.
A few days after the Anne Frank tour, we were back in Amsterdam for my reason for coming back to the city. I’ve been to New York, Barcelona, and Paris – all great cities for museums, but Amsterdam will always be the city I remember most for the Van Gogh. When I visited in 2008, I was so impressed by the way the tour walked me through the phases of Van Gogh’s life and career. During my school years I’d skipped art in favor of music, but even with my poor visual arts education, I could see how his talent developed and grew. I was looking forward to introducing him to Shannon.
This time we skipped the boat and took the tram to the museum district. It dropped us right in front of the Van Gogh. We had 45 minutes to kill before our entrance time, so we walked through the nearby market area and had churros and a stroopwafel. Both were fresh, warm, and really tasty, though super sweet.
The Van Gogh was everything I remembered. I liked the early pieces, like The Potato Eaters, that reflected working-class life. I saw the Paris influence with color and looser brushwork. His Japanese prints will always remind me of my days of traveling for work when I had a giant sticker on my laptop lid with his Japanese almond blossoms. The Van Gogh Museum does a beautiful job of inviting you into Van Gogh’s world, with its beauty, loneliness, and unique perspective on the world.
Shannon is pretty reserved and didn’t say much, but when I asked what she thought, she said she liked it even better than Teylers Museum in Haarlem, which she really seemed to enjoy, so I felt like it was mission accomplished.
“Great things are not done by impulse,
but by a series of small things
brought together.”
~ Vincent Van Gogh
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Tips & Recommendations
Wherever you plan to go, you MUST order tickets ahead of time. Research the rules for each place of interest.
For the Anne Frank House, they open sales only six weeks ahead of the date and they sell out quickly. Buy only from the Anne Frank site and be ready to jump online to purchase. As of October 2025, tickets are 16 euros for adults and 7 euros for ages 10-17. It’s only one euro for children under 9. Beware of fraudulent sites offering tickets or those offering as part of a package.
I wanted to visit the Corrie ten Boom house in Haarlem. I was so excited to realize our B&B was within walking distance. My brothers and sister and I all remember our mom reading The Hiding Place aloud to us. There is no fee for entry to the house, but you must have a ticket and we were too late when I tried to reserve online a month ahead of time. Available spots are limited and are booked weeks in advance.
Follow the rules of when to arrive. At both the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh, there is a window of time to line up for your entry. At Anne Frank, we watched as one man begged to be allowed to enter. They had messed up the time and missed their slot, but they were turned away.
Plan on leaving big bags and packages behind. Most museums require you to check big bags in lockers before entry. We traveled light on museum day.