It was cool and rainy when I landed but unlike many cities Amsterdam did not look grey and cold when it was overcast.  I spent a large part of the first morning queuing to enter Anne Frank House, which had just re-opened following renovations.  It was a humbling visit and I don't think I truly appreciated the diary until I had stood where the family lived and saw just how close they were to being discovered at any moment.  About a year after my visit I found myself working on a musical adaptation of the diary, but the plans came to nothing, mostly for copyright reasons.  I still have a number of my songs on the computer and play them every so often on the piano.

The other museum I visited was the Van Gogh.  I saw all the famous Sunflowers and Irises but also some landscapes I had never seen before.  I searched the gift shop for a reproduction but seem to have fallen in love with the one Van Gogh no one thinks is interesting enough to reproduce.  I recently saw a Tom Thompson exhibition in Toronto, but the souvenir copies of his work seemed flat and dull, so perhaps it is best I just remember the Van Gogh as it was and stop looking for a copy.