A friend in Rotterdam!!!!!

---

No, I didn't make friends with a local, but almost as good, one of my best friends from London came to visit for the weekend. Miss Sophie Beattie arrived early on Thursday afternoon, and after dumping her things at my place we headed out on foot to see the 'sights' of Rotterdam. Ten minutes and a few cube houses later, it was reassuring to note that nothing had changed in our respective behaviours and we were catching up over a beer in a cafe near the Oude Haven (it was raining honest!)



We continued to sample Belgium's finest lagers and ales until hunger kicked in, and we headed home to cook up a Mexican burrito feast, accompanied of course, by nothing other than some home-made frozen Margheritas. This endeavour was further encouraged by our resident Colombian ex-bartender (a friend of Héctor’s who was staying with us at the time - the "Colombian Monster"), who assured us he knew the perfect recipe. Half a bottle of tequila later I became slightly dubious of these assertions when, after running out of lime juice he started adding crushed lime skin as a substitute???? Nevertheless there was tequila to be drunk, and we all know these things won't do themselves!



The next morning we made a slightly more successful attempt at doing some sightseeing by driving to Gouda to visit the home of the famous Dutch cheese. Unfortunately, parking restrictions limited our time here, but we managed to have lunch, visit the cheese museum, and enjoy many free samples before heading home (in the rain of course) to settle ourselves in front of a couple of movies for the evening.



Saturday arrived and lo and behold, the sun was shining!! A rare event like this cannot be taken lightly, and we fully intended to make the most of the day by enjoying the Netherlands the way it was meant to be experienced - on the Water! Being a weekend, Héctor was finally able to join us and we made the short walk to the Erasmusbrug on the River Maas. Here we embarked on the amazing water bus, the best public transport ever invented, and took the 1hr somewhat-scenic ride to Dordrecht, a small, typically Dutch town in Zuid-Holland. It was here that we introduced Sophie to the best of Dutch delicacies – Bitterballen! These small, deep-fried balls that rumoured to contain some sort of meat, and have the constituency of mashed potato mixed with gravy, are served with mustard as a snack in most bars and cafes. And why not? As it was very elegantly put by a certain Colombian Monster “Just take a moment to think about its - it’s liquid meat. What’s not to like?”



I have some very firm beliefs, and one of these is that it is an offence, when sitting outside on a terrace on a warm sunny day, not to partake in the enjoyment of an alcoholic beverage. In order not to insult my morals, we were supping on some cool lagers when we remembered it was the Grand National today. Given there was a horse called ‘Sea bass’ running (probably best explained through another blog), I wanted, no I needed to watch the race, and we contemplated how we could achieve this – we could return home early and try to catch it on TV, or we could try and find somewhere in this small Dutch town that would be showing it. Our options halved as the beer continued to flow and time evaporated into thin air. And so we left the café not overly optimistic, but our prayers were very soon answered by a reliable old friend - the Irish Pub!



And thus, the rest of the afternoon was spent first watching the Grand National (and when Sea Bass came in 3rd, I was in the money - £6!!), then playing pool, and finally a sophisticated game involving the flicking of an increasing number of beer mats and trying to catch them. We eventually escaped, and armed with some extra cans and dubious-looking, fluorescent liquor shots, we made it back to the ferry terminal in time to catch the final booze cruise; I mean waterbus, back to Rotterdam. For some reason this trip passed much quicker than on the way out, and before we knew it we docking back at the Erasmusbrug and stumbling back home.



The final drama occurred the next day when we left home early, nursing our hangovers, to drive Soph to the train station. This is when the complications of living in a city where you don’t speak the language come to play. For the past two weeks we had been seeing signs everywhere advertising the Rotterdam marathon taking place this Sunday, with some other Dutch stuff written underneath. Well apparently the Dutch stuff was kinda important as it outlined all the roads that would be closed on this day including every road that could take us to the central station. Armed with the knowledge that this was the only train that would allow Soph to make her connecting Eurostar in Brussels, and that we would never make it using public transport as our travel cards were all safely locked up back home, we made the split-second decision that the best option was to walk (run) the 2km to the station. So off we went negotiating blocked roads, police, and spectators to make it to the station with 4 minutes to spare (obviously the running was completely unnecessary!)



Thanks for visiting Sophie! Come back soon.

---