Some five years ago the Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum was being renovated and expanded, and about a third of its collection went on tour. We drove to Washington very early on a Saturday morning and arrived at the ticket line in front of the National Gallery at 6:00 a.m. There in the cold and dark, we joined a party, chatted, drank coffee, and read the Washington Post until the door opened and we could enter and get a pair of the limited tickets. We enjoyed the exhibit immensely and have talked since then of some day following the paintings to Amsterdam and seeing the entire collection. Our trip to Paris provided the opportunity. It is four and one-half hours by train, downtown to downtown, from Paris to Amsterdam. We decided to catch an early train on Wednesday and return Thursday evening. We had made our hotel reservation before leaving for Paris and found a good off-season price of 55 Euro including a tiny room and a lovely breakfast. Crossing borders within the European Union by rail today is accomplished without border stops. We brought our passports and never had to pull them out. Leaving early, we saw dawn break over a very wet Belgium countryside. We admired the canal-bordered farms in the low country and even saw a few interesting birds in the fields. The train arrived at Amsterdam about Noon. We bought a pair of “I-Amsterdam Passes” and then caught a tram to the museum district. We found our hotel to be very satisfactory, left our bags there, and walked a block to the Van Gogh Museum. We rented an audio tour that was supposed to last an hour and a half. We spent five hours at it and drank luxuriously of that rich elixir of color and form that make up the paintings of the famous Dutch artist. Some two hundred Van Goghs – portraits, landscapes, and still-life’s - make up the heart of the collection that also includes other period art that reflect influences on and the influence of the master of color. We left not exhausted but refreshed by the glory of the exhibition. Today Amsterdam has a strong Indonesian influence, and our host recommended a nearby restaurant famous for its “rice table” dinner. We were there treated to a fulfilling and spicy island style dinner. Afterward, still early by European standards, we decided to go back downtown and tour the shopping district, Chinatown, and the famous red-light district. Oh my, but we certainly were not in Kansas anymore. We also stopped at a couple of “head shops” and admired the legal assortment of wares. Staying for only one night we found the City strange and thrilling enough without a smoke in a café, but Chuck commented that he would not have gone two nights there without a visit to one. None-the-less, it was edifying to see a City where marijuana is legal without any obvious breakdown of community, and saddening to know that here the law makes it necessary for criminal organizations with their associated problems to provide it. Certainly people have difficulty knowing what is good or bad for them, but then how can people or their government imagine that they can prescribe what is good or bad for everyone? Clearly, with regard to this drug, the good has for so many of us been enormous, and the bad, if there is any, been so little. The morning was cold and damp, and we started our day at the Rijksmuseum. Whereas we had seen works of French masters in Paris, here we found works of the Dutch Masters. Sadly this museum is undergoing renovation and only a small part of the collection was on display. Gladly, what is on display is the crème de la crème. Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals were among familiar names we found under the paintings. The Night Watch is indeed fabulous, but there are other equally grand scenes that we had never heard of there. After the museum visit we found smoked salmon sandwiches at a street stand and relaxed on a boat ride through the famous canals. The cabin was heated and had a glass ceiling. We made a quick stop at the Hermitage Museum of Amsterdam and lastly crossed town to the Anne Frank House. This remains a simple place, one of many formally business houses – now mostly residences – that line the Prince’s Canal. The scene is very peaceful, liberal, and prosperous today. As elsewhere in Amsterdam commuters furiously pedal up and down the tree lined street. As safe as the scene is now, we know that 63 years ago two families hid in the attic, were discovered, and treated horribly; all in accordance with someone’s idea of right. A young girl who perished left only a diary of a typical adolescent struggling to mature under difficult circumstances. That she was given no opportunity to find her way is a tragedy we can relate to without difficulty. Let us hope that this house will not loose its meaning until injustice has been removed from this world. That is likely to be a very long time. Being late afternoon it was time to find our way to the station. We had forgotten how Europe works and found fine sandwiches only with difficulty before going to the station. There, not being able to find a warm place to sit down and eat them, we asked and were sent upstairs into a beer bar where we bought two mugs of brew and enjoyed our dinner before winding our way through the rush hour crowd to our platform. We arrived in Paris at 10:30 and expertly found our way through the underground to the Metro station. Shortly after eleven we walked into the apartment. Laurie said she was just starting to worry about us. We told her that Amsterdam had been wonderful, and we went to bed after a glass of French red wine.