Ijmuiden -Amsterdam

These are not the windmills you are looking for...

We docked in Ijmuiden, which is about an hour's drive from Amsterdam.

I did another Jewish Cultural tour. I am very interested in Judaism, as it is the basis of my faith. It was a packed short day, made shorter by traffic back up due to an accident.

We started with a walking tour through the old Jewish Quarter, where our guide, Frank, gave a narrative about the typical life of community members. There are small metal plaques outside homes of people who were deported.

The Sephardic (Spanish /Portuguese) and Ashkanazi (Eastern Europe) communities lived in the same area, but did not intermingle very much. The Sephardic Synagogue is huge and beautiful, built in the 1600s. Since it is so large, and has no electricity or heating, there is a Winter Synagogue in the complex. The interior is much cozier.

We went to the Holocaust Memorial, which memorializes the 102,000 who were deported, most to Auschwitz and Sobibor. It is overwhelming to see all the bricks, each containing the name, birthdate, and age at death of a person. The walls zigzag through the memorial, and it's not possible to get the full impact in pictures. We saw Anne Frank's (Annelies Frank) and her sister Margot's bricks, as well as an unrelated Anna Frank- the names of my grandparents.

The last stop was the Jewish Museum, built in 4 connected synagogues that are no longer active for worship. It highlighted worship, community , family, and social issues. I would have liked more time there, but we had a 1:15 all-aboard.

The last spot we visited on our walk was a memorial to Auschwitz victims- 6 large cracked mirrors. Below the mirrors are some ashes of those memorialized.

And, of course, stuff happens. We were back in time but the card reader was down, resulting in a line that went from the ship to the terminal, and a long wait.Read more