Brom sees Rotterdam

Coocoo

On our second day Mara was a bit slow to get going, but in the end we got in the car and drove to Rotterdam. There we took a metro into town, because we wanted to do a walk Mara had found. First of course we had to find the beginning and as we had gotten off the metro early... After a bit of searching, we found an information office who were very kind and printed out a small map so we could follow a route (for some reason it didn't work on Mara's phone).

These types of bikes are quite a regular sight in the Netherlands.
The decoration was because of Eurovision.

It was hard to do at times, as it was only a small bit of paper and not all the street names were clear, but I think Mara did a great job finding the route. We didn't do the whole thing though, even though it was only 9,5 km long. By the time we stopped, we had already done over 10 km and Mara was getting tired. But we did get to see some of the more famous sights of Rotterdam.

Note the flag/decoration, that was all through the city.

One of the first we saw were the Cube houses near Blaak station. Yes, they are real houses and real people live in them! I wonder how they sleep, as it all seemed very topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy to me. 

The bridge was also decorated with song texts from Eurovision

We continued on our walk. We saw an old harbour and new high rise buildings and then we came to the most famous bridge of Rotterdam: the Erasmus bridge, named after the famous Erasmus who was born in Rotterdam.

The River Maas in front.
The low building on the far right used to be the Holland America Line terminal,
it is now a hotel.

Rotterdam is the only city in the Netherlands which actually has a sky line. Because it was bombed during the early stages of World War II (with the threat of the bombing of other cities, the Netherlands surrendered to Germany), the rubble was mainly taken away and used elsewhere. After the war, the city was rebuilt and now looks very modern.

One family/couple/person in one circle. 

From the modern glass and concrete we went to trees and grass. We saw a lady painting, dogs, social distancing circles painted in the grass and in the top photo you can see me in front of the Norwegian church. It used to stand closer to the old harbour, but they relocated it to this spot. And then close by we had our lunch.

The Euromast at 185 meters high.
Not decorated, which was a shame.

After lunch we continued and saw this massive huge tower. Mara said she wouldn't mind abseiling from it sometime, but I think she was joking. I hope she was anyway, as there is no chance I will accompany her. Unless there is some really good cake waiting for me on the ground. Then I might be persuaded.

On we went and we got to a small area of the city which had escaped WWII relatively unscathed. An old waterway with older houses/shops on both sides. Plus some really nice artwork as well. But my favourite were the mama coot and cootie that used a shopping bag as their own artificial island. It's not only the people of Rotterdam/the Netherlands who use what they can...

All the benches along this part of the route were decorated. 

After that we were close to the main train station and Mara had had enough. There were still a couple of km to do, but we decided to head back to our home for the week. After all, we had to get back in time for the first televised semi-final!