09 October 2014
After spending a restless night in some side street close to the Dutch/ German border (we will never know exactly where) we made our way across the Holland countryside on our way to visit an old friend, Keagan Sloman. He is doing 6 month work program, so we were looking forward to the idea of getting some washing done and sleeping under a roof.
We parked up at a free Park & Ride and caught the metro into town. We spent the day walking the streets of Rotterdam. We were told how hideous Rotterdam was and not to expect much, but the architecture was definitely one of the best I have seen across Europe. Most of Rotterdam was flattened during the war so a lot of the architecture is very modern, with a touch of the old buildings around.
We met up with Keagan after he finished work. Lauren made us a nice lasagna and we had a few beers and a good catch up. Most of the next day was spent doing washing and just chilling. That night we went out for dinner and met some of his work colleagues.
Lauren and I decided to not be as useless the next day so we went walking around again and looked at some more interesting architecture, such as the cube houses, as well as a giant indoor market/ flats. We (Lauren) enjoyed a walk around the market sampling cheese and salami. We bought a range of beers for beer tasting at home that night and got some take away pizzas and just chilled at home in the evening.
We said our farewells the following morning and made our way to Kinderdijk (the largest gathering of windmills in the Netherlands with 17). This really was ultimate Holland and unfortunately Laurens batteries for her camera decided to go all faulty on us. We did manage to get a few snaps, but just appreciated that if it wasn’t for these windmills keeping the water levels down, then most of Netherlands would not exist.
All in all it was a relaxing 3 days as we now head up to Amsterdam to meet Brenno and Caitlin for round 2.