We’re doing fine. Jake’s settled in at work and I’m hanging out in the hotel researching places to go when he gets home. Most of the big sight-seeing in Holland, we’ll do this weekend. Crazy thing… all the shops close at 5. Restaurants stop serving at 8. Whole place is shut down at night except for the night clubs…and they only serve drinks.
The trip over was ok. I hate planes, so I can’t say it was great…but it could have been worse, I suppose. No problems in security. Jake’s suitcase was overweight by 5 pounds…mine was under 15… so we moved things around to accommodate. We had a couple mixed drinks before getting on the plane. Eased the anxiety a bit.
Plane ride was 8 hours. Captain said it’d be smooth sailing except over New York… but it was fine over New York. Turbulence didn’t start until we were over the freakin ocean…for an hour. And then, they made this call over the speakers that “if there is a doctor or nurse on the plane, we need you at row 34″ — which was about 5 rows in front of us. I don’t know what was going on with the lady…and she was fine when we landed… but that plus the turbulence…. it was all I could do to not run out the nearest exit.
We landed in Amsterdam. Got our rental car. And plugged the GPS in. Rotterdam is about 45 minutes from Amsterdam. It was raining.
The temperature here is 55-ish. Overcast or party cloudy most of the time. The sun has been out today. It’s been nice to see.
After we successfully found our hotel and got our room…we slept. For 4 hours. We had a little time to walk around the area and see what kind of stuff is around us. Lots of shops, lots of restaurants. They seem to go for miles.
There are trams and trains and bicycle paths and walking paths….and cars. And each has their own stop and go signs. It’s really crazy to see.
The fashion has left us intrigued since we got here. It’s like a combination of 70s meets 1985. Little patent leather pointy flat shoes…HIGH TOP tennis shoes, ankle boots. Wow. And the pants, for women, are all about 4 sizes too small, in my view. Why do you want to show people your butt crack? Seriously? The men dress well. And we have seen some tight pants, but not too bad. REALLY nice suits for the business people. Casual consists of FABulous shoes and accessories. My brother said they are very “metro” up here (as opposed to Italy)… I can see that.
Rotterdam has some history to it, as I suppose most of Europe does. We’ll get to see some of that stuff this weekend.
Most of the old old buildings were destroyed in WWII. The entire city center was destroyed by the German bombs. The harbor is one of the largest in the world. Everyone says we need to spend the day down there. It’s about 15 blocks from where we are…so now all we need is time. Got plans to do that and see the sights around it. A few old churches. The old shipyard/Maritime museum and red light district are on the list, also.
I still want to drive to the country and see the windmills. We passed a few on the drive to Rotterdam. Old and new.
And I did see some oreo cows. hee!
