Rotterdam

Today we said our final goodbyes to Paris. We had an early morning train to catch to our next destination, Rotterdam.

Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands (second to Amsterdam). The city lies on a massive canal, and it serves as Europe’s largest port.

We learned that Rotterdam has some pretty interesting history too. During WWII, the German army completely demolished Rotterdam via an aerial attack. This practically leveled the entire city.

After the war, the city began to rebuild itself given a fresh start. To this day, Rotterdam is known for its unique architectural landscape. It’s a place where brilliant creativity is met with incredible engineering.

We arrived in Rotterdam around 11am. Our first stop was near the train station, and it was called Luchtsingel Bridge. This bright yellow bridge was crowdfunded to connect two areas of the city previously divided by train tracks. Each plank of the bridge is dedicated to those who supported the project.

Along the bridge we found an awesome little rooftop cafe called Op Het Dak. This small little venue specializes in serving fresh food sourced from local farmers of the region. They also have a small little outdoor space on their rooftop garden that provides great views of the city. Katie claims it’s by far the best bruschetta she has ever had.

About a 5 minute walk from our hotel was the Markthal. This giant arched building is home to the mother of all food markets. So many great options for a quick bite to eat, or a beer on one of their second level pavilions. The building even has four underground floors, one of which is a full sized grocery store. And finally, the Markthal contains 228 apartment units along the perimeter.

As if that isn’t enough, the entire ceiling of the Markthal is home to the world’s largest mural. We did some reading as to how they actually constructed the mural and it was pretty interesting. They first started with a giant image that was 147 terabytes. In fact, they needed special servers just to store it. From there they split out the image into 4000 smaller images that were printed on aluminum panels and placed onto the ceiling.

After that we made our way to the famous “cube houses” across the street. These interesting cube houses were constructed in the 70s and were made to resemble a “modern forest”. While they look really cool from the outside, it turns out that only ⅓ of the space inside is usable. We actually got to take a walk through one of them.

At this point we had worked up quite an appetite and we had one place in mind called the Fenix Food Factory. It was about a 30 minute walk away, and we got to walk over the iconic Erasmusbrug Bridge.

Another side-note about Rotterdam is that this city is super bike/pedestrian friendly. Practically every road, including ones over the Erasmusbrug Bridge have a dedicated bike lane in addition to a dedicated pedestrian path. Practically everyone either bikes or walks. No Uber, Lyft, Bird, or Lime here. Just rent a bike!

The Fenix Food Factory is an absolute must. Located in an old port warehouse, this awesome little venue is home to a half a dozen food vendors that sell everything from fresh meats to dutch cheese. Oh, and ya, there is a brewery attached. So we grabbed a beer and scoped out our options.

We started at the meat market where we noticed that they were making charcuterie boards made up of bread, meat, and pickles. We talked with the butcher about all the different meats he had provided us, some of them local to the Netherlands. As if that wasn’t enough, he recommended we head over to the cheese vendor who also helped supplement our feast with some delicious dutch cheeses.

When we finally had our fill of beer, meat, and cheese then we headed back to our hotel. At this point it was raining pretty steadily, but we were too happy to care because we just had an amazing day in Rotterdam.