Day #4 - The Hague and Rotterdam

---

The Hague

We finished our day in The Hague with a tour of the miniture village of Madurodam (ya, I dont know how to pronounce it either). It is basically a minture version of all the important buildings in The Netherlands, how cool is that. Its like legoland without the lego. There were hundreds of scale models of churches, stadiums, city halls, docks, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I highly recommend a visit to this place if you are in the neighborhood of The Hague. What a cool name, The Hague. I suggest we change the name of Edmonton to The Edmonton. Maybe more people would visit. 😊 Of course it rained all morning again, but we didn't let it dampen our spirits.



Rotterdam

A short drive from The Hague is the city of Rotterdam. I dont know much about the history of Rotterdam other than it was bombed heavily during WWII and much of the city was left in rubble. This has led to an ultra modern city with amazing and cool architecture. There are cherry red highrises, round high rises, Buildings shaped like things, cube house (which were so cool), around every corner something funky and fun with the buildings. Every city should be like this, it is so interesting to walk around this city. It sure is a nice change of pace from the cookie cutter buildings we see all through Alberta. In the spirit of what Rotterdam is well known for Syd and I took a "2 hour" self guided walking tour of the city architecture. It was a lot of fun and after 6 hours we were beat and ready to go back to the hotel. (If Syd ever suggests that I got us lost, she lies!!!!! 😊



We finished our walking tour with a trip to the top of the highest building in The Netherlands, The Euromast. It is a massive observatory tower held up by a skinny little stick, certainly not structurally sound in my book. As many of you know I am not great with heights, but as I am a great daddy I took her up the top of the tower. Of course I screamed like a little girl the entire time up there, but I made up for it by allowing Sydney to pretend like she didn't know who I was. It worked out well for both of us. The view from the top were stunning. Views of all the architecture we had just seen as well as sea views. Pretty amazing.

At the bottom of the tower was a pretty nice cafe diner. I had an apple crepe and Sydeny had an apple butter and Nutella crepe. They were tasty.

Thats about it, tomorrow we leave the Netherlands behind and head for the next adventure. Enjoy the pics and know they are much better if you can get here yourself.

Our overall view of Rotterdam

Kyle 9/10 - "The architecture is worth the plane ride here alone. If you want to know what an innovative and creative city government can do for a city come here."

Syd 7/10 - "Take the Architecture walking tour, but dont walk, take a bike"

Our overall view on The Netherlands

Kyle - 7/10 - The food is not up to par with the rest of Europe, the people are friendlier than they are in France but not as nice as they are in Spain, but it is a unique and interesting place to visit as long as you dont want to spend more than a week. Lots of churches, art galleries, museums, history, and architecture to please most cultural tastes. The ladies are also pretty cute (don't tell Syd I said that)

Syd - 8.5/10 - Its a beutiful country and lots of things to do.

---