The Netherlands Part 1 - Rotterdam

We are getting way too spoiled with our travel these days. Now local private guides are not good enough, we have to bring our own guides with us. During the second week of the kid's spring/Easter break from school we traveled to Holland with our friend Madelon, who grew up in Rotterdam. Unfortunately Bernhard could not join us for this trip, but we managed to survive without him. This was a great change for me since I did not have to research all of the places to go and see since we had our native Dutch guide with us.
Tuesday afternoon we flew a little over an hour with the Royal Dutch Airline, KLM, to Amsterdam. The flight was delayed a little over an hour so we started behind on our jam packed agenda. After landing and getting luggage we had to get on a train for another hour to get to Rotterdam, plus one more local train to get to the old harbor area in the city center.

This is where we found our Cube House home for the next couple of days. These Cube Houses are very famous and a big tourist attraction for the city. We happened to find one that you could rent. Madelon told us these were in a perfect location for our tours around the city. As you can see from the pictures it is a really nice area.

I did not know that the cities that we were visiting have not yet heard of the invention of the elevator. I was told Holland was flat, I was not told that they put stairs everywhere just for fun. To get to our cube you have to walk up several sets of stairs to get to the central square of the cubes. Below is a funky artsy picture from the central square. It was cropped at an angle to get the panorama.

This was our cube below. Notice the design of building these on pedestals, not for architecture purposes, they just wanted to add even more stairs. So you have to climb up two levels of narrow steep steps to get to the 1st floor of the three level cube that is already two levels above the three levels above the ground level, got it?

It was not so bad except for the fifty pounds in each piece of luggage when we arrived and at the end of a long touring days the steps were my nemesis. Below was another area when you leave the central square there is a cool walkway to get to a back set of stairs in another direction. 

These pictures are not going to tell the story of how wacky the inside of these things are. Above and below is the top level of the cube. A good size sitting area looking out over the roofs of the other cubes. I enjoyed a few minutes up here each morning.

These pictures are in the common space, living room area. It has to be hard to try and decorate and find furniture for these rooms, but they seem to have managed. Dutch television is cool because they do show English programming in English with Dutch subtitles. Almost every person we came in contact with in Holland spoke great English. In Germany they voice dub over English shows and in most cases you cannot even get the original English version because it is not licensed for use in Germany. I get the two schools of thought, protecting tradition and such, but it was nice hearing English and not struggling with language barriers for a few days.

The below picture I was trying to capture the extreme angles of the windows. On the left side the windows are looking up at the roofs and on the right those windows are showing the ground thirty feet down. The kids really enjoyed the cube house and we had a lot of fun staying there.

After checking in to the room we had to get moving on our "program" as Madelon called it. She had made reservations for dinner and arranged a water taxi to get us there. We made the walk to the Maas river and found our taxi. Our private guide suggested to sit in the back. 

As you can see the kids had fun. These water taxis are not messing around, they go fast.

I was able to get a couple of pictures between bounces off of wakes in the river from other boats. The red bridge is the Willemsbrug and the white bridge below is the Erasmusbrug referred to as "The Swan".

Dinner was at the historical building that is now the Hotel New York. From 1873–1989 it was the embarkation point for passenger ships going to New York. I think the below monument represents the historical ships that use to leave this port. Today it is a nice play area and park just outside of the hotel and restaurant.

Madelon's sister still lives and works in Rotterdam so she was able to meet up with us for dinner. Madelon slept at her sister's apartment so they did get a little time to catch up with each other. 

We had a nice dinner and watched a beautiful sunset. The kids played outside while I took some pictures and the girls finished up in the restaurant.

Wednesday we had a full agenda. Madelon picked us up from our cube and we headed out. Above is from the cube area looking out towards the old harbor and the historic White House and Willemsbrug.

This is looking back towards the cube houses with another residential building and the train station for this area. Below is the new Markthal building. This was our first stop to check out the market and this brand new building. 

On the main floor this is a nice market for fresh foods and meats along with just about anything else you might want. On the outside of the horseshoe building there are apartments. There are also restaurants above some of the ground floor shops.

A few weeks ago Bernhard and Madelon drove to Holland to pick up some supplies for Baby Keller coming in June. They brought back some goat cheese for us. We liked it so much Madelon found us a cheese stand to get some more. We bought a lot of cheese to bring back to Germany along with a nice port wine. 

One huge advantage to having a native Dutch person with us was finding out about all of the food traditions. We had many opportunities during the trip to sample Dutch treats. We would have missed most of them is we were on our own. Just outside of the market was our next stop. "Small pancakes" called Poffertjes are a Dutch treat. We got to see the process to make them, then they are covered in butter and powdered sugar. What is not to like?

We had to move on to catch our boat that was taking us to Kinderdijk. We had a noon river cruise to see the famous Dutch windmills. Most of the people sat on the back deck of the ship, but we found a table in the front perfect for our group. There were also tables inside. I am not sure the people looking out the front windows were too excited about us sitting in front of them, but they did get a show of a different variety.

Katherine entertained us with her iPad tunes and dance moves. Note Cindy wearing David's warm hat in the video. I bet we were entertaining for the people sitting inside.

The boat was very slow going towards Kinderdijk. We were not really sure why it took longer than listed on the program. We did get to see some sites from the river and had a nice relaxing cruise.

They dropped us off at a location a little ways from the windmills. We had to walk through part of the town of Kinderdijk to get to there. The famous Dutch wooden shoes were on display at many of the houses.

So the touristy places with the large wooden shoes for pictures are not just cliche or old traditions. They actually still use them, at least in some homes.

I am pretty happy with how some of these photos turned out. Madelon was nice to take a lot of family photos for us during the whole trip. There were a lot of people but it was not too bad since the area is so spread out. We walked a long ways overall but it was great weather and a cool experience. So here are a bunch of pictures of windmills.

We were all surprised to discover that many of these windmills appeared to have families living in them. We saw laundry out drying, kids toys, and people working in the garden.

The ride back on the boat had a lot more people since a large tour group rode back with us. Thankfully the boat went much faster coming back. Here is the Rotterdam skyline as we returned. This city was our favorite part of the trip. It was less crowded than Amsterdam and much cleaner. It is also very modern with touches of historical buildings are places. The Hotel New York building was on a pier that has been completely redone with new high rise buildings. Those four angled buildings above next to the bridge has a famous old restaurant in between them that you can see from the river. Our old harbor area is surrounded by modern buildings and I really like the architecture in these new buildings. There are more examples further down.  

That evening we met up with Madelon's sister and had dinner at a Turkish Greek middle Eastern type restaurant called Bazar. It is a really popular place that is huge and busy all of the time. The decor would not be a style I would choose in my house but it worked there. Katherine was checking herself out in the reflective wall.

The rest of the evening we relaxed at the cube and rested up for our next busy day. 

We had to pack up everything and say goodbye to our cube home. We still had a full day in Rotterdam but we would arrive back in Amsterdam this evening. We took a train a few stops away to walk towards our next site seeing adventure. We walked along a canal for a long time and came across this old container ship converted into a playground. We stopped to let the kids play for a few minutes.

We made it to the bend in the river to find the SS Rotterdam. This is an old passenger ship that has been converted to a hotel and museum.

We got to check out the inside of the ship and made it out to the back deck for some pictures.

None of us wanted to make the hike back to the train so we asked the reception desk to call us a water taxi. By the time we walked out the door and down the steps to the pick up point the taxi was coming around the corner to meet us. We climbed in and took off. This time the driver saw how excited the kids were to ride so he turned it into a thrill ride. He was aiming at large wakes and we were literally flying at times bouncing down the river. The kids were laughing and having fun and in no time we were back at the old harbor to pick up our luggage.

Before leaving we did sit down at one of the patio restaurants overlooking the old harbor. It was a nice sunny day so we sat outside to eat and drink and enjoy the vacation for a while. There was some discussion about skipping Amsterdam all together and just staying in Rotterdam for a couple of extra days. Alas we stuck with the plan and headed to the Rotterdam central station with luggage in tow. 

Here are some more examples of the cool buildings in Rotterdam. The brown blob is a new church and the white buildings are residential I think. Below is a large office building and the brand new central train station on the left side.

Madelon got us on the right train and we said goodbye to Rotterdam. It was an action packed really fun couple of days. Amsterdam was next on the program.