Monday, June 27, 2011

Rotterdam / Brussels

26-06-2011

Sunday morning , Rotterdam was asleep. We along with the a few joggers were the only ones on the streets. But we had not seen the famous cube houses yet.

Cube Houses, fun to look at , not sure if they would be fun to live in permanently. A sign outside stated that creativeness was a necessity to live here as standard furniture would not fit. There is even a hostel nestled among the cubes. Close by were the two famous bridges of Rotterdam and not too far was the Euromast. Along the river there is a flag display , tried recognizing them as we went, I sure have improved this year.

Early afternoon we reached Brussels. As we stepped out of the train station we had a gentleman, face scarred from a knife or glass, come up and tell us to keep away our iPad as people have been killed for their phones, scary. I think that set the tone for the rest of the day, we were quite wary from then on.

The European side is dead on the weekends so we literally walked from one end to the other of the lower side. Passed by some old beautiful buildings of churches, palaces and museums, pretty gardens, grand statues and a war memorial column. The good thing is near all of them is a plaque with quite a decent explanation. Along the way had Belgian fries ( a bit of a let down after the ones in Amsterdam), Belgian waffles ( yummy) and Belgian beer ( fruity one for me). Visited the statue of the Peeing boy (Manneken Pis), he was quite dressed up and actually has over 800 costumes, way more clothes than me!

Had a lovely dinner and even though we reached the hotel past midnight, the town is still alive. Overall did not like Brussels too much, the streets are dirty, smelly, saw two instances of road rage turning into fights (the reasons were flimsy), men spitting on the roads and one peeing in front of the restaurant, not a place I want to revisit.






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

No comments:

Post a Comment