Rotterdam

Last Saturday was the trip to Rotterdam organised by ISN. We wen to Rotterdam Centraal by train, and there ISN Rotterdam were waiting for us. They were the responsibles for the tour around the city.

At a first view is really different from Leiden. Rotterdam has very new and high buildings, whereas in Leiden this kind of buildings are hardly seen.

The walking to the town hall let us to see some buildings with very artistic facades, such as the one with faces painted on it or the other whose facade reminds to waves. Then we arrived at the town hall, which is one of the few buildings that wasn't new.

The guide told us that behind it was an empty huge square due to that place was destroyed by bombs in WW2 and it was never rebuild. The city was almost completely destroyed during the war, this is the reason why there are so many new edifices, some of them are skyscrapers.

After that we went to a covered market. It is very impressive because of its enormous wall made of glass. Inside the market there are a lot of stores and restaurants, so I guess you can go there and no cook for at least one week without repeating restaurant.

Besides, the variety of them is quite wide, from asian food (chinese, japanese...) to Spanish food. In the Spanish food stands there are churros, tapas and other things that I didn't expect to find in Holland.

The roof of this market is painted showing flower theme pictures, so if you aren't interested in buy or eat something you should visit it at least for see the paintings, It's something uncommon.

Just outside this market there is a stand market called Blaak Markt, where it can be found everything, from fruit or fish to cow skulls and of course, warm stroopwaffles.

From there we went to a square where there are some famous houses, but, unfortunely, we didn't have time to visit them. Here is a pic:

Finally we were to a boat trip, in the trip pancakes were served but in my case I felt seasick and only can eat one (the offer was unlimited pancakes!!). From the boat we could see the city and the canals. Canals in rotterdam are immense. The weather was extremely rainy so we couldn't enjoy the views as much as we wanted but we enjoy them in the walk to the boat.

Finally, I'd like to recommend you to visit Rotterdam. It is different from the other cities in Holland, the architecture is amazing and if the weather is not bad the views are wonderful.