Amsterdam is one of the most unique places I have ever experienced in my life. It doesn’t feel so much like a city as it does a really big park filled with hippies. In any other city it would be the pedestrian or car traffic you have to look out for, here it is bicycles. It is hard to imagine that just 70 years ago this place was entirely different. Beyond the party scene that the city is so well known for and beyond the beauty of the canals; Amsterdam is a place that is filled with its own unique place in history. We focused on Amsterdam specifically as a back drop to the holocaust. Amsterdam of course was the location in which Anne Frank wrote her infamous diary. The first thing we did when we got off the train was to take a short tram ride to the house that the Frank family was hidden in. Like so many historical sights on this trip, I walked right past the Frank house when we first arrived. It was just a single house in this expanse of canals and town houses. I was a bit disappointed with the Anne Frank house. It really didn’t do enough to make me feel immersed. I was just another person in this massive theme park-esque line wondering through a house. The only thing that immersed me was a sense of claustrophobia because I’m a tall guy. Other than that, the house just felt very artificial. I wish that I could have walked through the house on my own, maybe it would have affected me more. Nothing quite fits here in Amsterdam, it is without a doubt one of the strangest cities I have ever visited and yet still one of my absolute favorites.