This morning I leave Amsterdam to return to the United States.  Before I do, though, I'll leave you with some scenes of Amsterdam's beautiful canals and historic neighborhoods.

All photos appear courtesy of and copyright Anne Frank House/Anne Frank Fonds.

A walk through modern Amsterdam is a charming way to spend a morning or afternoon.  The city’s famous canals and pedestrian-friendly streets can create a feeling of perpetual peace. But we must not forget that Amsterdam has seen its darker days as well.

Today I visited the Anne Frank House, which is one of the city’s most important historic structures. The world knows Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl originally from Germany, from the famous diary she wrote during her family’s hiding from the Nazis in the early 1940s.

Because there was no bombing in Central Amsterdam during World War II, it is easy to forget that this city ever saw the scourge of war. Anne Frank’s father Otto moved his family here from Germany in 1940 to flee Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime in their native Germany. But by 1942, the Nazis had taken over the Netherlands in a five-day blitz, and began to round up Jews in Amsterdam and send them off to concentration camps.

Four employees of Otto Frank helped the Frank family and four other Jews to hide in a secret apartment behind the warehouse and offices where Otto worked. They managed to stay sequestered for more nearly two years, and Anne, a 15-year-old girl, kept detailed, moving diaries about the family’s time in hiding. Unfortunately, the “Secret Annex” was eventually found, and the Franks sent off to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot were later sent to camp Bergen-Belsen, and died there of illness, one month before the camp was liberated by the Allies. Of the eight people who had been hidden in the "Secret Annex," only Otto Frank survived.

After his return to Amsterdam, Otto received Anne’s diaries from Miep Gies, one of the helpers and had them published. The work presents a moving portrait of the struggle and fear that the family faced, and helps readers to understand the grim realities of the times. Later, Otto established a museum at the former company, where today visitors can walk through the hiding place and learn about Anne’s life there.

The Diaries of Anne Frank became an worldwide bestseller, and the Amsterdam museum is equally popular. When I toured the house this morning, it was packed with visitors. We saw the small rooms where the families were forced to spend their days behind blackout curtains, without ever peering out into the streets below. In video exhibits throughout the museum, friends and contemporaries of the Frank family tell their stories about Otto, Anna, and surviving the Nazi regime.

Whenever you visit a place like the Anne Frank House, or another site associated with sweeping human atrocity, it can be difficult to process – sometimes, it’s simply too much to take. Your emotions begin to shut down, as a defense mechanism. But the images you see will remain with you, and in the coming days and weeks, they will come out of your subconscious in new thoughts and feelings.

I’m a firm believer that when we travel, we must take time to visit these difficult places. These visits are not fun, but they are important.  These experiences sow the seeds of compassion, understanding and, oddly enough, hope – the hope that one day, we may reap a harvest of peace.

Photos Courtesy Van Gogh Museum

If there’s one thing you must experience during a trip to Amsterdam (besides a Dutch pancake), it’s the city’s Van Gogh museum.

Art lovers will immediately recognize this famous Dutch painter who, along with Rembrandt, is one of the Netherlands’ most prominent cultural figures. But even if you’re not brushed up on your 19^th-century European impressionist painters, with a visit to this museum you’ll discover how much Van Gogh influenced the way in which we interpret images in the world around us.

Vincent Van Gogh is perhaps most famous for his colorful, swirling and surreal Starry Night. You won’t see that on display at the museum in Amsterdam (it resides at New York’s Museum of Modern Art), but you will see a wide-ranging catalog of his other excellent work, including numerous self-portraits and a famous scene he painted of his bedroom. The Van Gogh Museum has some 200 paintings and 500 paintings by the artist, as well as 700 letters he wrote to his brother Theo and others.

The museum presents these works in chronological order, displaying them with parallel stories of the artist’s life and struggles. He took up painting as an adult with no formal art training, and went most of his career without ever selling a single painting. In his late 30s, he struggled with epilepsy and mental illness, famously cutting off part of his own ear and eventually taking his own life. It would only be later that the art community would recognize him as one of the foremost fathers of modern painting.

Though the story is dark at points, the museum’s exhibits are beautiful. Walking through, I see how Van Gogh was a master of Impressionist-inspired techniques.  From a distance, his paintings all look perfectly clear and in focus; when you take a step closer though, you see that they are all composed of thick, short and colorful brushstrokes. The strokes by themselves could pass for haphazard, but when you take them together, you see that they are carefully and deliberately designed to depict farmland, cityscapes and human portraits in a colorful, innovative way.

The Van Gogh Museum is just one of many art institutions in Amsterdam, which is celebrating its artistic heritage this year with a variety of special exhibits and events.

Today I enjoyed one of Amsterdam’s most surprising and delicious treat’s – the Dutch pancake.

Although we know pancakes as an American breakfast food, in Amsterdam and throughout the Netherlands they are favorite dishes for lunch or dinner. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pancake houses throughout this city serving locals and tourists alike – wherever you go, chances are you’re not very far from one.

I’m traveling in Amsterdam with Monograms, one of the companies in the Globus family which gives visitors a wide-open itinerary with a local host to help them find their way around the city. Because these trips give travelers total flexibility during the day, I was able to eat at “Pancakes!,” a small restaurant in an old historic home that would not hold a traditional group. But one of my fellow travel writers had read about this particular one in the New York Times, and so a foursome of us made the special trip halfway across town to try it out.

All I can say is – I’m hooked! Unlike their thick, fluffy American cousins, Dutch pancakes are wide, floppy affairs that cover a dinner plate from rim to rim. They are a bit spongier than their American cousins, and more chewy, perhaps. But their real strength is in their diversity – at Pancakes!, along with other pancake houses around town, the dish is served with a wide variety of toppings and fillings. Guests can order traditional combinations, such as pancakes with strawberries or bananas, or more savory and spicy combinations.

Today I opted for #126 – a pancake full of shredded fried bacon, sliced bananas and ground red pepper. These ingredients weren’t piled on top of the pancake, but rather cooked right into the batter. It may sound like an odd combination of flavors, but drizzled liberally with maple syrup, this pancake was a sweet, spicy and savory delight.

(Full disclosure: “Pancakes!” was not my first Dutch pancake experience – I had a bacon pancake at a local restaurant shortly after my trans-Atlantic flight landed in Amsterdam. And I may very well have another one before I leave to fly home.)

Sometimes a good walk can clear your head and help you see the things around you in a new and fresh way. In Volendam, a small fishing village outside of Amsterdam, a simple walk through town gave me a new perspective.

It’s a Saturday, you see.  And that’s important.

I don’t want to be jaded, but I couldn’t help but to feel like I’ve seen Volendam before – in Germany, in Switzerland, in Ireland, in Mexico, in Canada, in New England… even in Florida. Charming, yes, but not unique. And the sad part is that when tourists begin to discover these wonderful little places, their charm becomes a commodity. The towns no longer seem as authentic – instead, they are caricatures of themselves, peddling a certain image for tourists, all so they can sell t-shirts and ice cream.

Walking along the dock in Volendam, my spirits sank a little, as I saw the typical throngs of tourists crowded into sidewalk cafes, eating their frozen treats and stopping for photos in the most inconvenient places.  So I decided to just walk by, and I kept walking.

This is where the charm of Volendam comes into focus.  In just a few minutes, I was clear of the dockside, of the tourist district, and all of the trappings of the cheap commercialism. Just a few blocks away, I found myself in a local neighborhood, of cute Dutch style houses with peaked roofs and immaculate gardens, laid out along the sides of a canal. Down a side street, a local weekend market was taking place, where neighbors met while browsing cheese, nuts, crafts and handmade clothing. No one was there to put on a show for tourists, and no one was speaking English. This was just life in a Dutch village.

Walking through the neighborhood for half an hour or so, I saw all of the trappings of normal life on a Saturday afternoon – teenagers riding bikes through the streets, mothers on an afternoon walk pushing toddlers around in strollers, and old couples enjoying a stroll down the sidewalk on a sunny, 72-degree afternoon.  As I took it in, I remembered one of the reasons that I love travel so much: When you get past the business and the hospitality and the hassle, travel reminds us how connected we are to people of different races, different nationalities and different languages.  We are so different in so many ways, but in the end, there is so much more that we have in common.

I returned to the ship with a new spring to my step. It’s a Saturday, and I feel privileged to have enjoyed a little bit of it with the good people of Volendam. This is why we travel, and this is why those of us who get to work in tourism are blessed beyond belief.

I’m in Holland (or the Netherlands, if you insist), for the christening of the ms Creativity, the newest ship to join Avalon Waterways’ river cruising portfolio.

Along with a handful of international travel journalists, I’ve been on the ship for about a day now, getting to know the beautiful new vessel, and to experience some of the advantages of river cruising. Our short weekend journey has taken us from Amsterdam to Hoorn, a scenic and historic city, and now to Volendam, a small village where today’s christening took place.

The ms Creativity is the third in a class of five sister ships, and the eighth to join the Avalon fleet. The 110-meter ship holds 140 passengers in 70 state rooms, most of which are equipped with floor-to-ceiling windows and French balconies. River cruise ships are much more intimate than the superliners used for most ocean cruises; still, the Creativity features a well-appointed dining room, two lounges, an internet café, a fitness center and salon.

Though our journey has been short, I can already see why river cruising has become so popular. The river is calm, so there is no seasickness. And the small size of the vessel makes it easy to get to know a number of people on board, without feeling overwhelmed by the crowds.

But perhaps the most impressive facet is the destination itself. River cruising allows you to experience Europe (or China or the Nile or other destinations) in a way that oceanliner cruising cannot. Our itinerary includes stops in a number of charming small towns that a cruise ship could never reach. The Creativity is specially outfitted with a collapsible wheelhouse and deck railing so that it can be navigated under some of Europe’s low bridges.

When we disembark, we blend into the town like locals, instead of overwhelming it as swarms of thousands of cruise passengers also do. The city tours, like everything else on a river cruise vessel, seems more intimate and more casual. Even today’s christening ceremony was fun and understated – dignitaries kept their remarks brief, and everyone enjoyed the popping bottle of champagne against the ship’s hull.

Tomorrow, I’ll disembark for a three-day city tour of Amsterdam, while the Creativity gears up for its inaugural cruise on the Rhine toward Germany. While I won’t have time to come along, this experience has vaulted river cruising toward the top of my list of much anticipated travel experiences.