Roadtrip to Rotterdam

To put it bluntly, Rotterdam kicks Amsterdam’s butt. It’s a beautiful, clean city with some really amazing, modern architecture. After having visited there I really can’t understand why everyone raves about Amsterdam so much and hardly anyone talks about Rotterdam.

I was invited to go there on a roadtrip just last weekend with four French guys; JB, Greg, Olivier and Mathieu. It was a last minute decision - they invited me on Wednesday night and we were in the car and leaving Strasbourg by Friday afternoon.

It was so exciting to leave Strasbourg by car. In fact, it was pretty exciting just to be in a car at all considering I haven’t driven for almost four months. I had my face pressed against the window like a dog pretty much the whole way!

Coming from Australia, where it takes a good day if not more to drive between cities, it was pretty strange to drive only six hours and cross three international borders. We went from France through Luxemburg, through Brussels, and then into the Netherlands. As soon as we crossed the Netherlands’ border I was naively expecting to see fields of tulips and big wooden windmills. No such luck. It was just pretty much the same old green fields you see by the side of most motorways. A little disappointing, I have to admit. I guess you can't believe everything you see on postcards!

But on arrival in Rotterdam my spirits lifted again. I fell in love with the city as soon as I saw it. Actually it reminded me a bit of Sydney from a distance - big tall buildings with lots of surrounding water. The centre of Rotterdam was pretty much destroyed during the Second World War so a lot of the town centre is really new and it looks like they’ve had fun trying to create an interesting looking city.

A friend of the boys I was travelling with, Max, is doing a student exchange in Rotterdam this year and he and his Swiss flatmate, Flo, were generous enough to let the five of us crash at their place for a couple of nights. We were all pretty much camping on the floor but it was fantastic to not have to pay for accommodation.

As we were only there for two nights and two days we didn’t get to see absolutely everything Rotterdam has to offer, but we did go for a good walk around the city, including a trip up the giant Euromast to check out the awesome view from the top. We even made it to the beach, about 30 minutes from the city by train. Not the prettiest beach I’ve ever seen but it was the first time I’ve been to a beach since I left home and it was really nice to feel the sand on my feet again.

All in all, a fantastic weekend away. I was a little apprehensive at first to be spending an entire weekend with boys but it turned out to be a blast. They were all really nice and even though Max and Flo both spoke English, I spent most of the weekend practising my French which was an added bonus to checking out a new city.

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