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A few photos around Rotterdam starting with the beautiful apartment I rented for the week near Het Park. Ik weet het niet why I chose such a white, clean place as a base for cycling adventures. I spent a lot of worry making sure I didn’t leave a tire mark on a wall or chain grease on the white furniture. Other than that everything was perfect with the apartment. The bed was super-comfortable. I drank loads of coffee from the Nespresso machine. The neighborhood was great too. It reminded me of Park Slope….only neater, and nicer smelling, and with much better multimodal traffic flow.

Parked down the street this beautiful Babboe City cargo bike. Do you really store that beautiful bike outside? (Of als u begrijpt me niet. Doet u echt uw mooie, mooie fiets slaan buiten?) I’ve heard that the Dutch have a saying, “Normal is strange enough.”  And maybe the uniformity of the fietsen is a tiny glimpse into the Dutch psyche. After Rotterdam the variety of bikes in London and Bruges was shocking. I have to say, I’ve rarely seen a dance as beautiful as Dutch women moving seamlessly from walking to biking to walking, like well, they’d being biking all their lives.

Heavenly Cupcakes! Both good luck and bad that the vegan cupcake bakery was just around the corner from my apartment. The owners are very friendly. They also sell vegan cheese which tasted like real cheese to me. Of course, I’ve not had real cheese for more than six years. Smaakt lekker!

Nice place to go SUPing! Lekker weer voor het ook! Actually the whole country is a nice place for SUPing, but the group I paddled with met here on Sunday morning. The instructor was great and spoke perfect English. I didn’t make her go through the entire lesson again in English just for me since I’d SUP’d a few times before. I did pick up some good tips from the Dutch version. I only wish my Dutch had progressed enough to understand more than a few words of what she said, but her demonstrations were very good. After the ocean waves and JetSki wakes the last place I paddled, SUPing here was very fun and relaxing. Unsurprisingly the Dutch are as polite to one another on the water as they are on the roads.

The obligatory molen. For some reason I don’t have photos of the windmills in Kinderdijk. This one is northwest of Rotterdam.

One reason Rotterdam has so much modern architecture is because the city was heavily bombed near the start of WWII. Photos of the Cube House. Possibly controversial. Arguably inefficient. But I have to admit ik vind het leuk.

I returned home from my awesome Rotterdam–LEL–Brugge adventure a few days ago. Now the travel log posts will start to dribble in.

I arrived in Rotterdam on a Thursday afternoon and wasted no time getting out on my bike. That probably contributed, along with lots of good vegan food, to making Rotterdam my favorite part of the trip. I guess I shouldn’t push NYC off the top of my list of favorite cites after only seven days, but I love Rotterdam!

I roughly followed #3 of the Beleef de Haven (Experience the port) rides.  I was pretty confused when my GPS directed me to the edge of the river, but was happily surprised to find that the worm hole all the cyclists were popping out of led to the Maastunnel. I didn’t take many photos, and none in the tunnel, so you’ll have to go see it for yourself.