Dordrecht … I mean, um, Rotterdam

So you know how I said I was TOTALLY NOT jetlagging and how cool I was? Well, ignore that. I went to bed at 11pm last night and woke up at 2am, 4am and finally at 6am. My hosts didn't wake up till 10am. That gave me 4 hours to kill - and let me tell you, even I, master procrastinator and Internet-user that I am, had difficulty finding stuff to do. What's worse is that there were gale-force wind gusts outside that A) made it impossible to sleep and B) made it scary to go outside. Oh, did I mention that I only brought sandals and only 1 pair of capris (not even pants!) to Europe? I don't think skirts and dresses would've fared well today.

Also, this stupid cold that I probably caught from that lady from Dusseldorf on the plane is not going away and I'm very cross. Funny story - I tried to buy orange juice today at the train station (thought the vitamin C would just kick this cold to the curb).

I mean if you saw this in the store, you'd think it was orange juice, right?

Yea, nope. It was an orange-flavoured yogurt drink. Still delicious but nary a vitamin C molecule in sight. Fail.

Anyway, the cold made me feel kind of loopy in the morning, but I couldn't sleep (wind/jetlag/trams/crazy mating birds outside are to blame). So I started planning my day in Rotterdam. And then I watched some Masterchef. And then I blogged and Tumbld and facebooked. It was just ... iffy. I mean, if I'm staying with my hosts and it's the weekend and they were planning on doing something with me, I couldn't just up and leave. Even though I basically spent 4 hours wanking around on the Internet. So I waited until they woke up and then we had a quick breakfast before FINALLY we were on our way.

In any case, they wanted to head to Dordrecht to check out an exhibit at the museum. Ok, I'm game. Because, as my parents like to remind me, I have to absorb some culture while in Europe (into my poor Internet-obsessed, uncultured soul).

So we're driving and driving and Dordrecht turns out to be this very very cute little town. Much like Delft in its cobblestone narrow streets and tiny rows of houses, although the frequent canals were replaced by one large yacht-docking area. But even the boats were cute - straight out of the 19th century (or the 18th or the 17th - I mean, they just looked very old-style).

Cute, right? Except that it was all experienced like so:

Because apparently there is no where to park in Dordrecht. There were parking meters that would let you stay for MAX 28 minutes (WTF? What an arbitrary number ...) and then there were parking garages. Except that ...

Oh yea, they'd say "VRIJ", which I think meant open (or at least it was written in green letters, which I assume means GO in Dutch just as it does in English); and you'd drive up this ramp to the garage and then WHOOPS, it doesn't open. So we had to do a very fun rollercoaster-like maneuver to get down from there and turn around in a tiny cobble stone street.

Well, at least I got a very thorough driving tour through Dordrecht out of that. In the end, we still couldn't find parking, so we just left. (Bummer right? Not every story has a happy ending ... Damn fairy tales, giving me hope and everything - except no fairy tale writer had ever confronted the daunting quest of finding parking.)

In the end, I got dropped off in Rotterdam, while my hosts continued back on their way to Delft. Rotterdam was definitely different. It was much more of a metropolitan European city (although there still were cobblestone streets and tiny rows of houses).

Now Rotterdam is a city of contrasts. There’s your typical little Dutch houses and cobblestone streets …

And then there’s the newly built post-War abstract-modern-contemporary let’s-build-the-weirdest-shaped-house-ever zone.

I kind of mistimed my plan for the city (because I always have a plan … I even circled my route on the map and everything).

Yea, my wonderful plan to take a boat-tour of the city was foiled by the fact that their tours lasted 1.5 hours. And they only had 1 boat. By the time I got to the dock, it was either A) take the 3:30 tour and not have time to do anything else, or B) take the 5pm tour later (meaning I had to get all my sightseeing done in like 2 hours. Impossible).

Instead, I walked down the promenade, bothering poor bystanders to take photos of me every 5 meters. They weren’t pleased (no, jk, everyone was perfectly nice) and I now realize why people travel with friends/significant others. I think a boyfriend would’ve been even better because he would have no ability to refuse taking pictures of me. Note to self for later.

Seeing as I still have to be cultural, I stopped by the Wereldmuseum, which held a collection of traditional artifacts from Asia and Austronesia. Lots of wooden carved masks from Oceania and Tibetan prayer shawls and golden Buddha statuettes from India.

New lesson learned: apparently Buddha meditated for a long time and was actually fasting, so he became very skeletal. All the statuettes I saw here depicted him as a quite lean young man, unlike the plump statuettes you see in America. Correlation? Hmm, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

I continued on my way after a 30 minute run-through of the museum (artifacts aren’t really my thing … But give me a museum dedicated to shoes, or cheese, or wine, and I’m all yours). Then suddenly, I turned around …

See my previous post on Delft RE: my theory of tourists and tall things. I think I shall call it the Must Climb Uncontrollably Syndrome, or MuCUS for short. Never one to back down from a challenge, I set out to answer my calling.

On the way, I partly forgot my climbing compulsion when I came upon a Father’s Day celebration in the park (whoops, sorry Dad, I totally forgot about it … but you know I love ya all the time, we don’t need a special day to celebrate that, right? Although if we do ever end up celebrating Children’s Day, I’m all for it …). There were puppets and magicians and basically, they had me at hot Dutch guy in a sparkly tuxedo doing magic tricks.

If no one caught my super inventive lyrics, a la JT, I can clarify that I am not a sex-addicted maniac who preys on circus performers. Although they are rumoured to be very bendy.

But at last …

I got to the tower. And made it to the top (there was actually a lift there, which dampened my MuCUS a little bit, but I was still excited).

Basically, you get to the top (also, I would suggest NOT wearing heeled thong sandals that are only attached to your feet by virtue of your toes holding on to the shoe … the little bit of stairs that there is has holes in it, like a grate, and it is absolutely terrifying trying to climb it when you are worried that with every step, you will lose your favorite shoes.)

And at the top, you get into this round spinny thingy and that takes you up EVEN HIGHER and then spins around slowly so you get a full view of Rotterdam. Basically, you see the two things that Dutch people do well …

Really nice parks …

and very weird modern architecture.

In any case, having satisfied my altitude-driven compulsion disorder (maybe I should call it ADCD? Like OCD for tourists … ), I was going to walk all the way back to where I came from, but then I got lazy (slash a very nice looking young Dutch man decided to help me, even though I didn’t really need help, and he walked me into the subway and who was I to say no, right?). Also my feet were super exhausted, because I am not one of those god-awful tourists who wears running shoes around town.

I write this in bold as my continuous DECLARATION of DECENT SHOEWEAR, and I shall not be ashamed of it. I shall only wear nice shoes when I am in a nice place like Europe. To hell with my feet and the blisters. That's what my family-size pack of band-aids is for.

But besides my Declaration of Decent Shoewear, I also fully believe that to truly understand and immerse yourself in a new city, you have to take the public transportation available. Taking a crowded metro in Paris is the way to feel the fast-pace there; taking a tram in Delft gives you a feel for how Delftians? (delfins? dolphins? ahaha) really live.

My impressions of the metro here is that it’s absolutely deserted and Rotterdam is super empty. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday, or I picked the wrong path to walk, but half the time, I was the only person in sight. (That has been a common theme in my travels so far).

I actually ended up taking the metro because I wanted to visit the Arboretum (kind of like the Botanical Gardens), but just my luck – it was closed. So I basically just walked straight back to the train station and went back downtown. I did however step off at Blaak Station to take a photo of the famous Kjub houses, because Wikipedia said I should. So I did.

So that was cool. I think during normal-people times, you can walk in and see how the furniture is arranged so that people can actually live in these cubes, but obviously (as has been the trend so far), I was too late and it was closed.

So I just took the train back to Delft (and can I just say how fricking convenient the train system is? Best. Thing. Ever. I don’t know why the North America doesn’t pony up and build nice clean trains (and those dirty New York trains don’t count) that go everywhere (those 2 metro lines in Vancouver don’t count either) and do it super fast and fairly cheap. Seriously, America, you call yourself the First World?). Had a wonderfully filling dinner with my hosts (all that walking is almost like running a marathon … which means I obviously have to carb-load like a pro, right?). Collapsed in bed and slept like a baby.

The End.