July 30, 2026
A flight home scheduled for late today had been cancelled and rebooked for tomorrow. We therefore had a day to poke about. After donating the old bikes we had flown over (1), we wandered to the Botanical Garden, where Hugo de Vries had done much work to bolster Darwin's work by studying genetics (2). A canal cruise followed.
Notification of the flight change came early enough to book a visit to the Anne Frank House (3). After an introductory lecture (4), the crowd moved in respectful silence through the secret annex in which Anne Frank and others hid for two years during World War II before being discovered and deported to Auschwitz. Only the father survived.
(1) Uncertain about the difficulty of flying with our bikes, we opted to bring old bikes on the one way trip and donate them in Amsterdam. With a trip of over 200 miles, it was good to have our own bikes which fit well. Also, what we saved in bike rental cost (almost) paid for new bikes at home.
(2) Neither Darwin nor de Vries was aware of the Gregor Mendel's studies on genetic inheritance in peas.
(3) A common destination in Amsterdam, the memorial tour regularly sells out.
(4) Drastically oversimplify Hitler's rise to power as a direct result of America's Dawes Plan. They also displayed a map incorrectly marking Hungary's 1932 borders.
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