I'm going to miss this beautifully spare studio.

To think I was so overwhelmed and wary when we arrived. Amsterdam is a shining gem. Oh, the food here!

I am so grateful.

I'm a history nerd and a bookish girl, and my heroes are much the same. Sixty years ago, a young girl lived in Amsterdam who loved to read Dickens and study classical history. She was imaginative and strong-willed and utterly facile with a pen. She died far too young, of disease and starvation at Bergen-Belsen. She left an indelible mark on the world.

I've wanted to see the Anne Frank House for years. To walk where she walked and see what she saw as she hid from the Nazis for all those years and months.

I made it there today. 263 Prinsengracht, an address as familiar to me as my own, sits in the middle of a snowy, quiet street, overlooking a canal. It has been restored as if it were 1942. You enter the Secret Annexe itself through the swinging bookcase door that is still concealing the backhouse.

Going in was immensely moving. I touched their sink. I saw Anne's collection of film star photos and postcards still glued to her bedroom wall. I read her name on the register for transport to Auschwitz and grew very still. I stood in front of her diary and my knees buckled.

And then, we ate a toasted cheese sandwich in the cafe and cried a little. Quite a morning.

-Meg

DJ at Little Buddha is doing some masterful mixing - I didn't realize this was an Ekova song until halfway thru. (video)

Seems like a favorite past-time for us is to go to a swanky bar and be online. Little Buddha in the Leidsplein is pret-ty nii-ice. Excellent savory lemon cucumber-something cocktail.

This is a real glyph of Amsterdam for me: warming up in a cafe with a coffee and brandy, seeing the tram go by outside, the sound of French music in the cafe and the street noises, so different from American street noises.

De Pijp ("Pipe") area in south-central Amsterdam. Just fun things we've seen.

Einstein is watching you.

Houseboat in the canal.

Stainless-steel, uh, devices. In a, uh, shop.

After sleeping a bit late (go figure) we got up and about for a cafe lunch and a bit more tripping about. So. Cold. Today.

Hanging out after talking w Dr. Aubrey de Grey

Meg and Salmaan Sana (big volunteer/co-organizer of TEDxAms, and dear tweep)

We found Dutch gin!

M capturing my "look" for TEDx.

Conversation/interview on problems w the solution to aging.