Further down the Maas

Michelle and I spent this weekend in Rotterdam and Den Haag, the often forgotten major cities in the Netherlands. Heck, we almost forgot to visit them, until we realized we only have one last "unplanned" weekend left! So we trained it up to Rotterdam on Saturday morning, and saw some of the coolest feats of architecture. Considering how old Amsterdam is, it's easy to forget that most of the new construction in Holland is in Rotterdam, and thus we were quite amazed to see so many new buildings. Rotterdam has in fact taken over Amsterdam as the biggest port in Europe, and if I remember correctly, the world (though I may be mistaken on that last one).


Of course, in true Dutch form, everything had to be extreme, different, and often have a slight dark humor to it. All over the town where the metal statues of naked men. Often they would be standing on the edge of buildings, like they were about to jump off... sometimes they would be on the ground like they just did. There was also this cute, almost mascot of Rotterdam named Fikkie. The plaque next to it basically says that Fikkie found his way all over the town, because people would rob him and move him all over. Now he has a permanent home... and a mess to clean up.




There was also these funky looking cube houses, which are like cubes, but tilted into a diamond shape. They are hard to explain, so here are some photos :) you can buy one for about 219,000 Euro.





For fans of extreme sports, you can repel off the side of this tower in Rotterdam.

Michelle and I opted out.


Apparently we weren't the only people who ever made it to Rotterdam, as we found some famous names in the walk of fame.




The next day, we trained further north to Den Haag... A city you may recognize as the international war crimes tribunal's headquarters. That was cool, and the city looked pretty sweet, but we were more interested in the Scheveningen, a big beach resort town on the edge of Den Haag. It had been a long time since we'd seen a sea, and thus we spent most of the day playing like the many kids we saw in the sand.







Oh, and another extreme sport allowed people to bungee off another tower above the sea... again not really our cup of tea... in fact, it was scary enough walking up the tower, since some of the boards were broken off, and others creaked, and bowed as you stepped on them. According to Michelle, I walked nervously, and hugged the sturdier center area.



So then we headed back home. Good times. Almost over times... I'll leave you with a fun Dutch company to try and pronounce. I know I'm going to miss seeing words with 20 + letters in them! Oh and some cool sand sculptures we saw in both Rotterdam and Den Haag.