Eliot's Travels

Jim took the day off on Monday - it was Whit Monday for the Dutch. It was a good break , since he hadn't taken a day off since we got here. We decided to go back to Rotterdam to tour the city. We followed a walking tour from Centraal Station. Along our route, we saw a very elaborate skate park with stainless steel ramps and half pipes. The shopping area was pretty quiet as it was a national holiday. Along the way, we saw Crocs for sale - pretty crazy. The shop was closed, so we couldn't check out the price - spendy, I am sure!

We spent 1.5 hours viewing the artwork at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The most intriguing exhibit was Sylvie Zijlmans' The Uninvited. She had several larger than life photos of individual people completing soaking wet staring down at you in a eery sort of way. The promo says: large photographs and sculptures that depict strange events and enigmatic figures. That pretty much covers it! Other notables included a subtle mural named Blind Spot by Roland Schimmel; a lovely Degas sculpture; a collection of Salvador Dali paintings and sculptures; works by the old masters including Rembrandt (which we managed to miss), Monet, Renoir, Gaugin, among others; and a great exhibit on the Phaidon Design Classics. This book set identifies 999 classics in design like the computer kneeling chair, the rubiks cube, the paper clip, etc. Very cool. The kids played on these bunny sculptures while we ate lunch at the edge of museum park.

Rotterdam is known for its modern architecture. Most of the city was destroyed from bombing raids in WWII. We ventured over to the Veerhaven to see the large racing boats; there was even a Volvo sponsored boat. We walked along the water toward the Erasmusbrug (Erasmus street bridge). Along this route is where the water taxis, cruise boats, and ferries pick up passengers. The bridge is a wonder and we decided to walk across most of it. It looks like a sailboat/catamaran. Eliot thought that it was really cool that the tram travelled on the bridge with the cars. We moved on down Boomjes (street) along the water and found the second bridge - Willemsbrug - which has red supports. The tour took us to Oude Haven (old harbor) dating back as early as the 1400s. Here we saw the ultimate in contrasts - the old boats in the historical harbor and the modern cube apartments Overblaak (over the Blaak train station). To get back to the train station, we rode the Metro (after waiting 20 minutes for a tram that wasn't running on the holiday) and ventured home via the stoptrein!!

posted by Whitney @ 8:20 AM