Rotterdam and Gouda, Holland

Our latest adventure, last weekend, was a trip to Rotterdam in Holland to visit my friend Luke Seewald from Queen's who is now finishing up his MBA at Erasmus. Well, a lot has changed since Luke and I goofed off in the back row of Calculus class in first year (which might have explained my marks). Luke has less hair, but I've got more grey hair. We both married Queen's girls, but Luke and Mel have two wonderful kids: Ollie (5) and Gabriella (3).

A nice and smooth 3 hour high speed train ride from Paris is all it took to cross part of France, Belgium and into Rotterdam. Fortunately Luke and Mel's apartment is only a 10 minute walk from the train station (this comes in handy at the end of the weekend).

Saturday was spent wandering Rotterdam with our local tour guides in tow. We made sure to see more of the major architectural highlights that the city has to offer. Rotterdam was basically bombed flat during WWII, so it's a bit surreal to be in a large European city, but without all the old building and architecture that you come to expect when living in a city like Paris. First up was the stunning National Nederlanden skyscraper that seems to just disappear into the crisp clear fall sky.

We made sure to make our way to the NAI - Netherland Architecture Institute. They had an exposition on all types of world habitats, architecture and sustainable development; very interesting but some quite heavy stuff.

Of course a trip to Rotterdam wouldn't be complete without a trip to the famous Cube Houses.

and a bit of modern art


The following day we took the 15 minute train ride to the town of Gouda; yes where the cheese is from. It's a sleepy little town, especially on a Sunday when virtually everything is closed.


And of course we couldn't miss the Gouda Cheese Museum.


Sunday night it was back to Paris, or so we thought. Once the intercity train made the first stop the train manager came on and said we weren't going anywhere for a while. Someone up ahead had been hit by another train. Since we only had 30 minutes in between our train arriving in Bruxelles and our TGV train for Paris (the last one of the night) we had a feeling we wouldn't make it to Paris that night. So we hoped off the train and luckily there was a train that was available to make the 20 minute trip back to Rotterdam. Lucky for us we made it back to Rotterdam and thankfully Mel and Luke live close to the main train station. Up early the next morning for the 7:30 am train to Paris, and that's how our weekend in Rotterdam went.

Thanks to Mel, Luke, Ollie and Gaby for being such awesome hosts.

More pictures posted here, enjoy: http://picasaweb.google.com/DKSPENCE76