Walkin' 'Round Windy Rotterdam

Our day was spent walking around Rotterdam. This is The Netherlands' second largest city (after Amsterdam), and it is filled with lots of unique architecture. It's also way more modern than most Dutch cities, due to the fact that it was bombed flat in World War II. 

It took us about an hour by train to get from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Rotterdam has a lovely central station, and is actually an attraction in the city!

Entrance to Rotterdam's Centraal Station

We passed by the City Hall, which is very fancy!

Next, we walked by the city’s oldest church -  Sint-Laurenskerk (aka St. Lawrence Church). It is a Gothic Church building, which was completed in 1525, and it is the only medieval building remaining in the city. It was also almost totally destroyed during the bombing of Rotterdam in May of 1940, but was restored between 1947 and 1968.

Front of St. Lawrence Church

Side of the church

Just around the corner of the church is a popular marketplace, named Markthal. This place is ah-maze-ing! It puts San Francisco’s Ferry Building to shame with endless amounts of food vendors: from small patisseries, to nut & dried fruits, to dried meats, to juice bars….the list goes on. It was almost being like a kid in a candy store; every food stand looked amazing, and we wanted to have it all!

But we were on a mission, and that mission was to find poffertjes, a popular Dutch snack. Poffertjes are little fluffy pancacke-like treats covered with powdered sugar and a big slab of butter. And of course, poffertjes were found in Markthal. Success!

These will surely clog your arteries, but it's totally worth it

After our sinful feast, we made our way to the Cube Houses. It's a collection of houses that were designed in the shape of cubes, and built between 1973 and 1984. The architecture is pretty amazing, and you can go inside one of the houses for only 3 Euro, which I ended up doing. Surprisingly, the houses are 3 stories high, although it's kind of compact. Still, the houses are really cool! You can even stay in one on Airbnb.

1st floor, living room

1st floor, kitchen

2nd floor, bedroom. It also wraps all the way around and also has the bathroom on this floor

3rd floor, sunroom

We then continued our walking tour along the water, admiring the architecture, the Wilems Bridge, and even walked across the famous Erasmus Bridge!

Wilems Bridge

Erasmus Bridge

Walking across the Erasmus Bridge.

By the time we walked across the bridge, our feet were super tired. So we hopped on the metro, to go back over to the city center. We found a tasty Middle Eastern restaurant to grab a late lunch, then it was back on our feet to do some more exploring!

Lookin' good......

I locked Adam in a cage and threw away the key ;)

Museumpark. A lovely park around one of the city's museums

After walking around the park, we decided it was time to head back. Our feet were hurting, especially mine. We walked through one of the trendy districts, popped into a few shops, and found this lovely gem...

"Gnome With a Butt Plug" or "Santa Claus" by Paul McCarthy

We got back to Amsterdam around 6pm, and the bike ride home was probably one of the scariest bike rides of my life! It felt like being in a cab with an angry driver, speeding down San Francisco's crowded streets, and you're just praying and hoping that you get home alive....but on a bike. But we made it home in one piece, with a lovely dinner to be had!