Amsterdam

LORELAI: He sounds very cool, and not just ’cause he owns his own jet.

RORY: Well, remember to tell him that the way to get to you is through your daughter, who desperately wants to go to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, famous for its canals, earning it the moniker, “Venice of the North”. Although it has numerous attractions, including the Van Gogh Museum and the Royal Palace, my hunch is that Rory probably most wants to see the Anne Frank House, a museum dedicated to the celebrated Jewish wartime diarist Annelies “Anne” Frank (1929-1945), who hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic for two years, before being arrested with her family and taken to a concentration camp, where she died a few months later.

Not only is Anne Frank’s story tragic and compelling in itself, her dream of becoming a writer was fulfilled when her edited diary was published posthumously in 1947 – in English in 1952, as The Diary of a Young Girl. Rory nearly always seems to be drawn to places which have some literary connection, and I’m guessing that in the case of Amsterdam, it would be the chance to visit the place where lived another bright teenage girl who was a talented writer. In A Year in the Life, Rory becomes a writer herself.

This is now the third city that Rory has said she wants to visit. In Season 1, it was Fez, in Season 2 it was Prague, and now in Season 3, it is Amsterdam.