Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Rotterdam!!

Welcome to Rotterdam!! We headed to Rotterdam after our trip to London for a friends wedding. I was excited for our 5 day vacation in a new city.
Above and below you can see photos of the cube houses. A 3E entry fee led us inside for more views. It was super interesting and we found out that these houses sell for about 200,000E. We walked carefully around Rotterdam that day, doing our best to dodge cars, bikes and trams. That evening we hit up a local Tiki Bar. It was really cool inside, I doubled my money on a slot machine, which I did not know how to play nor could I understand, due to it being in Dutch. I guess that was luck of the Irish.
The next morning we found an amazing cafe  near our hotel called Memory Lane and down the street was the most gorgeous off licence I've ever seen. Later that day we headed to old town via water taxi. What a crazy ride, we were holding on for dear life, even though we were at our destination within 6 mins. Walking around Rotterdam, I noticed that most of their architecture is new and modern as most of the old did not make it through the war. Old town is basically two streets, so after a beer and a game of pool later, we were on the move again.
When we left old town we took the Tram back into town and then walked across the bridge and headed for sunset at Hotel New York. This hotel lies on a lot of history as this is where the Holland America Line started. Emigrants looking for a better life in the promised land embarked here to escape poverty and persecution and headed for New York. It sailed its last voyage in 1971 after transporting passengers for over 100yrs.  It was turned into a hotel/cafe in 1993. We sat outside in deck chairs drinking beers and watching the sunset over the city and the Maas. What a beautiful way to spend the evening before heading for Asian BBQ that night.
On Fri, we took the train to Antwerp for the day which will be my next blog posting.
Saturday was the wedding but before the wedding we went to the farmers market down the street. So many people and so many stalls but we ended up buying a table cloth for next summer.
Rotterdam, we hope to see you soon!!!