Brussels 2026

Monday, August 3 Eurostar It's our first time on high-speed rail! This Eurostar train was on a route that runs between Amsterdam and Paris, but we got off at the Brussels stop; between Amsterdam and Brussels, it only stopped at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Rotterdam Centraal Station, and Antwerpen-Centraal (Antwerp) Station. The peak speed of the train on this route is 300 km/hour (186 mph), which is close to a third of your average commercial airplane flight speed. Bearing in mind the three stops aforementioned in between, the train ride between Amsterdam and Brussels is about two hours. That's a distance of roughly 110 miles (177 km), which therefore averages about 54 mph (87 kph). For a Seattle-local comparison, the Amtrak between Seattle and Portland is a rail distance of 144 miles (232 km) and takes at minimum 3 hours and 25 minutes, which averages 42 mph (68 kph). —That doesn't really sound like that huge a difference, come to think of it, but only at first glance: the Amsterdam-Brussels Eurostar train is 29% faster than the Seattle-Portland Amtrak train, but that's in the best of circumstances between Seattle and Portland, which is rare. The Amtrak train can be scheduled for as long as four hours, depending on the time and train that is booked; plus, Amtrak is notoriously plagued by delays due to having to share tracks with freight trains which always get the right-of-way, so these numbers in the best of circumstances should be taken with a grain of salt. Rail travel is far different in Europe, where tracks are built as dedicated to travelers exclusively. What a dream it would be to do the same in the States!—but, Americans just never want to make that level of investment in public transit infrastructure. Anyway, all this average-speed talk aside, actually riding on a Eurostar train is surprisingly similar to being on a plane—particularly the seating, which includes overhead storage for smaller baggage; small storage under the seats in front of you; charging outlets; and perhaps most notably, seatback trays and cup holders, not to mention free wifi. The biggest difference is that you don't have to check larger luggage—there is shelving for large bags at the front of the train car—and there is no security check. We boarded our Eurostar train at Amsterdam Centraal, the same station where their Metro transit trains go. It's just that Metro trains are on subterranean platforms, whereas Eurostar and NS Rail (the Netherlands' national railway) trains are all on the elevated platforms.
Aparthotel Adagio Brussels Grand Place This shot was actually taken from the 6th floor of Brussels' Muntpunt Central Library, which we will get to again much later in this email. This is an elevated view of our Brussels hotel, Aparthotel Adagio Brussels Grand Place, although our actual hotel is the section you can see to the right, clearly slightly separate in design from the section in the rounded corner closest to the camera. "Grand Place" refers to the historic plaza surrounded by buildings that range in age from around 500 to 600 years old. It was only a third of a mile from our hotel, but other notable buildings were even closer, such as the city's central public library. On the ground floor, you can see a large opening in that rounded corner closest to the camera. That leads to an inner corridor in the middle of all the adjoined buildings on that block, which many of the hotel rooms overlook.
Our hotel room was one of those that overlooked this inner corridor through the middle of the block, from one end to the other. We were originally getting booked into a unit on the second floor, but when Shobhit asked us for a higher floor, they put us in the unit on the top, or 7th, floor. We were slightly disappointed it overlooked this inner corridor rather than the street outside, but we made do. Our unit was on the top floor seen to the right in the above shot, three windows in from the left. (The wall to the left was not units of any kind, but just patterned with large reflective circles.)
Walking Tour Through our booking with the Eurostar train, we were offered a so-called "free walking tour." Shobhit went ahead and booked one, choosing a tour at 3:45 p.m., after our train arrived about 20 minutes delayed at 1:25 p.m. or so. It turned out our "free" walking tour was a bit of a bait-and-switch, because when I asked our tour guide, Loïs, if he was a volunteer, he basically said not exactly: the tour ends with us being asked to pay what we thought it was worth. He even commented on how it was kind of misleading because the umbrellas they carry to help tour-goers find them literally have "Free Tour" printed on them. And although he played it as though our small group worked out well for him because it would involve less effort, this clearly meant he would get far less in tips than had the apparently many more who booked the 3:45 actually showed up—but, the tour started with only seven people aside from Loïs himself: Shobhit and me; a straight couple with a guy from Italy and a young woman from Estonia, though the woman said she now lives in Brussels; and an Indian family of a man and woman and little boy who currently live in Ireland. The Indian family only lasted maybe a quarter of the tour, though, as the boy was feeling unwell and so they had to leave. I was shocked to discover this tour lasted two and a half hours, and at the end Shobhit and I agreed to give Loïs €25 for each of us (totaling $57.74 USD combined). We paid first, and the Italian couple then offered the same—I wondered if they would have paid as much had they paid first—which Loïs was quite openly appreciative of. In any case, Loïs was very good at his job, deeply knowledgeable, so much so that I wondered if he was passionate about Belgian history—it turned out, not so much: he told us he studied biology and really wanted to get into documentary filmmaking but needed a job like this for supplemental income. This actually made me even more impressed, because I really think that typically in the U.S. in the same kind of scenario a young person would not be very likely to be so dedicated to a job only taken for supplemental income. Loïs did share that he was 25 years old, and I will admit I found him utterly adorable—in large part because of how he always pronounced the word "architecture," with the first syllable pronounced like the first syllable in "Archie." ("Arch-i-tecture")
Brussels Town Hall The walking tour began in Grand Place, where stands one of Brussels' signature buildings: their Town Hall, completed in 1455 and with a tower standing at a height of 315 feet (96 meters), making it even today the 22nd-tallest structure in Brussels. (None of the buildings in Brussels are all that impressively tall, mind you; their current tallest building, an office building, stands at 492 ft / 150 m.) That said, Town Hall stood as Brussels' tallest building for more than 400 years. As Loïs explained to us, it was the only building along the four-sided perimeter of Grand Place to survive the 1695 French bombardment of Brussels during the Nine Years' War, making Town Hall the only building there older than about 330 years. Its facade and tower, while being the primary target of the French, were the only parts of any of the buildings to withstand the bombardment. The history of Grand Place that Loïs shared with the group was thus quite fascinating, including a period during the mid-20th century when the city was apparently so blasé about the site that they allowed it to become a giant parking lot. Loïs showed us a photo of a bunch of cars parked in it and I was taken a little aback by the sight. A citizen campaign resulted in the removal of parking spaces by 1972, but cars were still allowed to drive through until 1990. The plaza and all the surrounding historic buildings were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, and ever since, the plaza has only been open to foot traffic.
Manneken Pis There was a moment during the tour when Loïs told us we were about to see "the most important tourist attraction" in Brussels, and wanted to know if any of us had a guess as to what it was. None of us knew, and I said I had no idea, which Loïs said made him very happy—but, when he took us here, I said with recognition: "Ohhh." I should have known! I had already seen this mentioned in YouTube videos I had watched about visiting Brussels, in some of which people recommended not bothering, characterizing it as a dumb touristy thing that was not really part of the "real Brussels." It turns out that's not really a fair characterization, though, as the Manneken Pis has been in this spot in one form or another since 1619. It would seem the legend and lore surrounding this statue has long been so extensive that it has basically become the overriding symbol of the city of Brussels, to the same degree, or maybe even more so, as the Space Needle in Seattle or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The original statue has been stolen and returned and damaged and repaired over the centuries, but now sits inside the Brussels City Museum in the King's House on Grand Place, where it has been since the 1960s; the statue in its original location is an exact replica from 1966. Even more noteworthy, Manneken Pis (this literally translates to Little Man Peeing) has long been subject to over 1,200 official costumes, many of which can be seen at La Garde Robe Manneken Pis Museum. Loïs took us by the museum, but it was closed at the time of our tour, so we could only peek through holes in the grating pulled down over the window. We were informed that the city even has a sort of application process for designing a new outfit for his collection, and if they accept the proposal they will send you his exact measurements for sewing together an outfit.
Tuesday, August 4 Atomium Manneken Pis may claim to be the "most important attraction" in Brussels, but easily its most popular, which was high on my list, was the Atomium—a 335-ft / 102-m, habitable replica of an iron crystal cell, which was the centerpiece of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). So, even though I have likened things like the Euromast in Rotterdam as that city's version of Seattle's Space Needle, this building is much more literally comparable in that sense, as the Space Needle was itself the centerpiece of the World's Fair in 1962. The Atomium is taller than Brussels Town Hall, but only by 20 feet (7 meters); it beat City Hall for the title of the city's second-tallest structure when completed. Shobhit and I had a booked tour somewhere else at 2:00 on this day, and we naively thought we had time to get to the Atomium and back comfortably beforehand if we left our hotel at about 11:30 a.m. What we did not know was that, once you purchase your entry ticket, you are filtered first through the exhibits in several of the lower spheres, which are accessed through the connecting arms on very long escalators, surrounded by flashing neon lights. Some of the spheres, which are 59 feet or 18 meters in diameter, have model and photo exhibits; and others are fully lit with neon lighting themselves. We actually kind of rushed through all of this, before we even realized how much more we should have been rushing—because we did not realize that this part of the tour ended with us being guided back down to the ground floor, to wait in a huge line for the single elevator that goes to the sphere at the very top. This, of course, was my primary objective to begin with, so I wasn't going to miss it, even though we waited in that massive line for a solid 45 minutes. Once we were up there, we were cutting it so close on time to get back to our next commitment that I whisked around in one single circle, taking 12 photos of mostly the city views over the course of three minutes before getting right back in the line—thankfully a fraction of the length—to get back down to the ground floor.
Royal Palace of Brussels The Atomium was three and a half miles north of our hotel, by far the farthest we traveled for any of our Brussels points of interest, and we took the Metro to get there; it took half an hour to get there and half an hour to get back. We were set to be only a couple of minutes late to our 2:00 timed entry at the Royal Palace of Brussels, but then I was relieved to discover it noted on our tickets that they would allow us in up to 30 minutes past the ticketed time. So, we didn't quite need to rush through the Atomium as much as we did, but I still got the photos I wanted, and we were glad to get to the Royal Palace actually pretty close to on time. A bit to my surprise, Shobhit seemed noticeably more interested in the Royal Palace of Brussels than he had been at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, which seemed kind of contradictory to me. Both the Netherlands and Belgium are constitutional hereditary monarchies with largely ceremonial kings—indeed, both kings have been reigning since 2013—so, what's the difference? At first Shobhit was talking like the Royal Palace was more interesting because it's a working palace, but actually both are; I think the difference was functional in its presentation. The palace in Amsterdam felt much more like a museum of furnished rooms, whereas the palace in Brussels had far more ornate, grand halls to walk through. Plus, we got to take a selfie with Belgium's King Philippe, who isn't exactly hot but is way better looking than the Netherlands' King Willem Alexander! Okay, so it was actually just a portrait. Whatever!
St. Michael & St. Gudula Cathedral Here we stopped at St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, mostly because Shobhit heard it to be the closest thing in Brussels to Notre Dame. Either way, it is of course among multiple gorgeous cathedrals in Brussels, and I wound up taking a bunch of photos in there. There was a live concert of the organ happening while we went in, so you can watch this video clip for either that or the moment when I almost tripped on a step because I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking while holding the camera: The first church we went inside, while on the walking tour, was Church of Our Lady of Victories at the Sablon (which may have contributed to the "Notre Dame" confusion, as the phrase means Our Lady, so this church's French name is Église Notre-Dame des Victoires au Sablon), and Shobhit and I did go back into that one later briefly as well, so I could get a photo of its famously stolen statue of Mother Mary in a boat, which has quite a legend attached to it.
Fritland Although we had already gotten recommendations from multiple people back in the States—including a couple of young Belgian men selling waffles at the Capitol Hill Farmers Market in Cal Anderson Park a couple of months ago—having Loïs at our disposal, he very helpfully wrote down several recommendations right in the Notes app on my phone for me: two Frite places; one Belgian chocolate place; and three Belgian waffle places. The first on the Frites list was a place called Frit Atelier, and we tried going there three times, and each time they were closed. But, his second recommendation, Fritland, was easily found only a couple of blocks from our hotel. This wound up being the one time we had Belgian fries during our three-day stay in Brussels. . . . They were fine.
The BeerLab Rooftop I wasn't even looking for a rooftop bar in Brussels, but we found one! We went out walking in the neighborhood of our hotel (basically the Grand Place neighborhood), and found the "Belgian Beer World Experience" in an old building three blocks away. There is another large plaza in front of this building, Place de la Bourse ("Stock Exchange Square"), which was created following the covering of the River Senne from one end of the city to the other, which was completed in 1871 (we learned during the walking tour that the river still flows, just through sewer tunnels under the city). The Bourse Palace, which faces the square, was the city's former stock exchange building from its completion in 1873 until 2015, and now houses the Belgian Beer World Experience, among a few other things like exhibition and meeting room space. Shobhit went inside to consider the Belgian Beer World Experience, which does include tasting, but because he knew I would have no interest in any "beer experience," he decided against it. The person at the ticket counter noted, however, that there was a rooftop bar that we could take an elevator straight to for free! So we went over to the elevators we were directed to, where a staffer was posted to scan a card that allowed us access, and in moments we were four floors up and at the "BeerLab Rooftop." The options here were still only beer, but I was happy to just walk around the outdoor seating spaces taking photos of this gorgeous city while Shobhit waited in line to order a beer. The photo above is one of those photos, and shows the street leading up into Grand Place only about a block away.
La Maison de Gaufres Keeping it classy with our first-ever Belgian waffle in Brussels! We took the advice of one of the YouTube videos I had watched and ate a waffle the way locals do—okay, not like we're a waffle version of Lady and the Tramp, but plain without all the fruit, chocolate and whipped cream toppings offered to tourists. This had only a light sprinkling of powdered sugar on top, with a tiny little, very thin chocolate placed over the middle, and having been cooked very fresh, it was fluffy and delicious. Anyway, this was at one of the Belgian waffle places Loïs recommended, called La Maison des Gaufres, which is French for House of Waffles. Shobhit tried to say that made it like our International House of Pancakes (Ihop), and I was like: I think it's a little different. Indeed the waffle at Maison des Gaufres was so delicious that we back again for a second one the next day.
Wednesday, August 5 Palace of Justice The Brussels Palace of Justice was yet another thing we only learned about while on the walking tour with Loïs, who had told us it was publicly accessible, so we went back to go inside and check it out on our own on Wednesday. Loïs told us that when it was completed in 1883, it was the largest building ever built—something Shobhit immediately challenged: larger than the Taj Mahal in India? Larger than the Egyptian pyramids? Well, it turns out this is another one of those hair-splitting "largest building" definitions, because it actually refers to to things: first, it was merely the largest footprint of a building ever constructed at the time; and second, the official definition of a "building" excludes things like tombs, which are otherwise uninhabitable, a kind of dumb distinction in my opinion but whatever. In any case, the Brussels Palace of Justice can still unequivocally lay claim to being the largest palace of justice in the world, with a footprint of 40,000 square meters (430,556 square feet); a dome height of 104 meters (341 feet—six feet taller than the Atomium); over 250 rooms, and 27 courtrooms. On the walking tour, Loïs noted that many different Belgian courts still use the building to this day.  
While walking through the Palace of Justice's cavernous interior, I found myself thinking of the huge, column-supported spaces seen in the Lord of the Rings movies. I also caught a glimpse of a guy standing in a court robe outside one of the closed doors, talking on his phone. He absently wiped his mouth with the jabot, or white neck doily, hanging from his collar. I didn't realize people ever used them that way, like they're napkins. Or was this guy just a slob?
European Parliament Hemicycle The European Parliament Hemicycle was one of the things I was most looking forward to touring—you know me, I love a capitol or legislative building—and it was another almost-fiasco, but turned out just fine in the end. I had originally booked an 11:30 a.m. guided tour in English on Tuesday, but on Monday I received an email that "for operational reasons" (I wonder if the scheduled tour guide got sick or something?), our tour was canceled, and so they automatically scheduled us for the next one that day: at 12:30. The problem there was that we already had booked tickets at 1:00 for the aforementioned Royal Palace of Brussels. I tried to contact the booking people at the Royal Palace of Brussels to reschedule, and after a few hours got an email back saying they were unwilling. For a little while there, I thought we were going to have to choose between the two, and ultimately I was leaning toward the Royal Palace because those were actually paid tickets, and the European Parliament tour was free, just with required timed entry booking. So, we went ahead with our Royal Palace tour and everything else we aimed to do on Tuesday, and then I booked a "multimedia tour" of European Parliament at 1:00 on Wednesday. We deliberately set out early to get to the Palace of Justice beforehand, but when we were done there much earllier than anticipated, we decided to head toward the European Parliament building so we would arrive right at the same time our guided tour had been scheduled on Tuesday, and see if they would let us join in then. I had to do so much in advance to book this tour, including creating a web account and uploading both of our passport numbers, I was very skeptical that this would work out—but it actually did! I had even tried to reply to the email from European Parliament to ask for a rebooking on Wednesday, and got an "undeliverable" message back. I was willing to settle for the multimedia self-tour, as it was far better than nothing and we'd still get to see the same areas. But when we walked up at 11:30 on Wednesday and explained that our booked tour the day before got canceled, the woman we were speaking to was just like, "Would you like to join the tour now?" Yes! She gave us little yellow "EN" stickers to indicate we were in the English-language tour, and we also had to scan our passports at kiosks that then matched with what I had registered online, and printed out little white passes with our names on them to wear. The tour group we joined was quite large, maybe around 22 people, but, much like Loïs on the walking tour on Monday, this tour guide, an Austrian woman named Laura, was truly excellent at her job—in her case, presumably, largely because of her previous experience as a journalist. Several people in the group asked a lot of questions, but Shobhit almost certainly asked the most, but I would easily have asked second-most. This is precisely why, if at all possible, I would say a guided tour is always the way to go, rather than a media guide on headphones that can't answer your potentially many questions. Laura was very patient with us, and we learned a ton of fascinating stuff on this tour. For example: the European Parliament is the largest employer of language interpreters in the world; there are 27 member nations of the EU but "sometime this decade" the 28th one to join will almost certainly be Montenegro (population 623,000—less than Seattle); the number of representatives each country can have in the European Parliament depends on their population but cannot be less than six or more than 96 (a limit currently held by Germany, Europe's most populous country); and the circle of 12 stars on the EU flag does not represent the 12 founding EU members as Shobhit assumed, but rather the "perfection" of 12 as a number. These examples only scratch the surface of all we learned, and I had a really great time on this tour, feeling incredibly grateful we were ultimately able to make it happen.
Royal Library of Belgium / Museum Between the Royal Library of the Netherlands and the Royal Library of Belgium, it would seem there is not much to see, in terms of libraries—except! Two things about the Royal Library of Belgium: first, they have a museum, which has an awesome exhibit about the earliest binding of books in the late middle ages, with several manuscripts from the Library of the Duke of Burgundy, from 600 years ago. Furthermore, regular tickets to this museum cost €11, but apparently this museum is free on the first Wednesday of every month, which this was! Score. Second, and this was what I naturally went there looking for more than anything, the Royal Library of Belgium building also has a fifth-floor cafeteria with panoramic views of the city. We climbed the stairs to the top floor that was accessible to the public (the 5th) and worked our way down as usual, but most floors, and certainly the actual library sections, were not accessible. We did not buy any food in the cafeteria, but we certainly walked all over the fairly wide outdoor seating space up there so I could get pictures. In the above shot, you can see the tower for Brussels Town Hall in the center-left distance.
Passion Chocolate Galerie Over the three days we were in Brussels, we went into a lot of Belgian chocolate shops, both among those recommended to us and others. It's not hard to walk into a random chocolate shop there and find the chocolates to be amazing. On Monday and Tuesday, Shobhit chose around three to come back to and do the actual buying, which we did at the end of our itinerary on Wednesday, our final day in Brussels. The above shot was taken at one of the shops we discovered on our own (and I should note that what we browsed barely scratched the surface of available Belgian chocolate shops), Passion Chocolat Galerie, which has a really fun, red-and-white decor inside. We bought a box of about 50 of the different chocolates here—it's what the woman in the photo above is wrapping up for us—to bring to the Family Vacation trip planned later this month. Fewer people are set to come to that Family Vacation than ever before, and the people not making it are going to miss out! There had been a different employee in the shop when we went in the first time, on Tuesday, and he was nice enough. But the woman in the photo above, who sold us the chocolate on Wednesday, gave us way more samples, and was so incredibly chatty that she even acknowledged it herself. "My husband is very very serious," she said, making a super serious face, "and does not talk much." She made hand gestures of yack-yacking to describe herself, and then added, "My husband says to me, sometimes, you can breathe." Ha! She was not originally from Belgium; if I remember correctly, she was from Albania.
Muntpunt Public Library It just goes to show, you never know where you'll run into a great quote by Madonna! This was at the Muntpunt Library, the central public library in Brussels, which was a block away from our hotel. Perfect quote for a library, right? I can't say that the exterior of Muntpunt Library was all that remarkable, but I was fairly taken with its interiors—in fact, between the central public libraries we saw in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Brussels. I think the one in Brussels was actually my favorite. [posted 10:44am]

The Netherlands 2026, Part Two: Rotterdam & the Hague

Thursday, July 30 Rotterdam Centraal I have to admit, much as I went out of my way to find cool libraries on this trip. the truly architecturally interesting buildings in the Netherlands have rather tended to be the train stations—particularly the Central Stations, or rather, in this case, "Rotterdam Centraal." The underground train platforms are of course all pretty similar, but the exterior buildings are very distinctive. In the case of Rotterdam, Centraal Station would be one of many structures with a single distinction in common: having been built within the past 80 years, because Rotterdam was the most extensively destroyed city by bombings in World War II. Since a huge portion of it—and basically all of its city center—has been rebuilt since, the city is known for its modern architecture. In the case of Rotterdam Centraal, there was no central station prior to the war, but an original Rotterdam Centraal built in 1957; and the current building opened in 2014. There is a 12-foot (3.6m) bronze statue of a Black woman standing on the plaza outside the main entrance, which I assumed to be a permanent installation there but is apparently planned to be in place for five years, since its first unveiling in 2023. The woman is not a real person, but reportedly the same fictional character as that of another statue that was installed in London in 2020.
The Depot Rotterdam I had eight points of interest marked to check off on our day trip to Rotterdam—having traveled there by NS Rail, the Netherlands' national railway; one way-tickets cost us each €18.70 ($21.45), and it took about 40 minutes from Station Duivendrecht on an InterCity Direct train (there are no such trains direct from Amsterdam Centraal for some reason). We had to take a 6-stop Metro ride from our hotel to Station Duivendrecht, making the overall journey to Rotterdam—about 48 miles or 78 km—about 65 minutes by train. This was only five minutes or so more than it would have taken to drive a car. Anyway, once actually in Rotterdam, some of my eight points of interest to check off did not quite pan out. One of these was The Depot, a very cool, reflective, bowl-shaped building with its own rooftop area that can be accessed with a museum ticket, and of course was my primary interest in it. Our first stop on a total combined five-mile loop around the city center was the Euromast (we'll get to that next), and I had no idea we'd be walking right past the Depot, the world's first publicly accessible art depot, where they store art for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. I took just a few quick pictures while walking by; we actually would have just gone in then but it was not yet 10:30 a.m. and they did not open until 11:00. I thought it was on the route coming back, but it turns out I somehow made a mistake on its location and we were too far from it to stop there before returning to Rotterdam Centraal at the end of the day.
Euromast And now for Rotterdam's answer to the Space Needle! Except, in this case, it's more like the Space Needle was Seattle's answer to the Euromast—which finished construction in 1960 for the Floriade, a horticultural exhibition and garden festival in Rotterdam. When the Euromast first opened, though, it stood at a height of 331 ft (101 m), making it the tallest structure in Rotterdam at the time, a title it lost to Erasmus Medical Center in 1968. In the above shot, the original height would have been just to the observatory you see roughly halfway up.
But! Then, in 1970, they added the "Space Tower," which even today is an add-on with additional cost to your admission ticket—which of course I still went for. I'm only going there once, after all. This addition added 275 ft (84m) to the height, giving it a total height of 606 ft (184.6 m). This is one foot taller than the Space Needle, but the Euromast's observatory and restaurant is at the roughly 300-ft (91.4 m) level, with the much smaller, but revolving structure affixed to the "Space Tower"—which they currently brand the "Euroscoop"—being basically a kind of ride you get in and ascend to the structure's total height.
This is the spectacular view of central Rotterdam from the Space Tower on the Euromast. In the second shot above you'll see a brief video I took while we were riding around in it. (Side note: Euromast is now the second-tallest structure in Rotterdam, behind the 705-ft / 215-m De Zalmhaven ("The Salmon Harbor") tower. This is the tallest building seen at center-left in the above tower, and we actually tried to visit the bar, Celest, on the 57th and 58th floors of the 61-story tower. But, they didn't open until 5:00 and we were too early, so, another item on my Rotterdam list unable to come to fruition. Disappointing!)
Spido Harbour Tour This was Shobhit's one major request for Rotterdam: a harbour tour. He really wanted to see Port of Rotterdam, because of its pretty notable significance: between 1962 and 2004, it was the world's busiest port by annual cargo tonnage. Since then, it has been overtaken by around ten Asian ports (today the top 5 are in China), but Rotterdam remains the largest port in Europe. It opened in the 14th century, and currently covers about 49 square miles, both water and land; connecting the Nieuwe Waterweg (a 12.7-mile / 20.5 km canal built opened in 1872—central Rotterdam is actually 19 miles or 30 km from the North Sea) with the Nieuwe Maas River. The Port of Rotterdam stretches about 42 km or 26 miles end to end. There are multiple companies that do Harbour Tours, but we chose Spido, largely because it was included on the one-day Rotterdam City Card we purchased. This City Card works differently from Amsterdam's, in that it offers only discounts and not free passes; most of the discounts are 25% off, as was the case here. The cards cost only €7.50 each, so we easily got our money's worth with those kinds of discounts. In the above shot you see the actual boat we boarded for the tour, which took 75 minutes and sailed only a portion of that massive port, albeit by moving into dead-end arms of it and turning back around two or three different times.
At Shobhit's suggestion, we sat in the open-air seating area on the very top of the boat, which certainly gave us the best views, but we often could not quite hear the English portions of the tour narration. It was still fun, and the only downside was how cloudy it was in Rotterdam most of the day we were there (thankfully it was much less so while we went up the Euromast, which was the first thing we walked to from Centraal Station), the only mostly-cloudy day we had during our first week in the Netherlands, which was mostly sunny and quite hot.
Fenix Museum De Zalmhaven was on our itinerary to walk to next, as it is maybe only a block or two from where we boarded the Spido boat. But, as I said, we found Celest to be closed and could not go up. But, Shobhit did notice this interesting structure with a spiraling silver observatory of some kind on top, and he wanted to walk across the Erasmus Bridge anyway. This was a roughly one-mile walk from where we boarded the Spido Harbour Tour, and when we arrived we found it to be a museum: Fenix, an art museum about migration. Exhibits included a Suitcase Labyrinth (I did not fully register at the time that this whole museum was dedicated to migration, so now the suitcases make sense); multiple sections of art displays, including a photography exhibit; and of course the architectural centerpiece, the "Tornado," which consists of two wooden staircases inside what look from a distance like stainless steel tubes. They connect each floor and the viewing platform on top of the building.
Erasmus Bridge The Erasmus Bridge, an architectural centerpiece of Rotterdam, was not specifically on my list either, but Shobhit decided he wanted to walk across it. Completed in 1996, it features a 456-ft (139-m) pylon with a bent shape that apparently earned it the nickname "The Swan." This bridge has a total length of 2,631 ft (802 m).
Markthal I was pretty thrilled by the discovery of Markthal ("Market Hall") in my pre-trip research on Rotterdam. This is a public market entirely enclosed by a horseshoe-shaped, residential building, some of the homes in which have windows overlooking the market. The ceiling is beautifully painted, and the "holes" on either end are actually glass walls. This would obviously be the best public market to go to on a rainy day, There are many restaurant establishments with rooftop seating on a second level. I tried to go up a staircase to get a photo, only to be met by a young man asking if I wanted seating for two. When I said I just wanted to get a picture of the view, he said there were no photos allowed there, and there was a staircase off to the side of the market that could be used for that. I'm sure I could have gotten photos if we had actually been seated, but we already had a snack at a place I saw recommended by a YouTuber sharing tips about Rotterdam: we went to a place called Tofu Heaven and had seasoned fried tofu that was absolutely delicious.
An exterior shot of Markthal. This was easily one of the coolest things we saw in Rotterdam. The 12-story structure apparently contains 228 apartments.
Cube Houses Thankfully, given we only had a day trip to Rotterdam, all of our points of interest I assembled were within a five-mile loop walk from Amsterdam Centraal Station—and the last few were all just a few blocks from each other: the Cube Houses are only about a block and a half walk from Markthal. People also actually live in these—including, we discovered only when we arrived, the guy operating the "Kijk-Kubus Museum-house" (Show Cube Museum-house). This museum is literally his own home, which he has lived in since the complex opened 42 years ago, in 1984! He just mans a little desk up the entrance during regular business hours, with most rooms very tidy with minimalist decor, and a few rooms blocked from public access. But, he told us it's his home he lives in when the museum is not open. A few spots did have cabinets full of stuff in them, though, such as this one with a ton of Star Wars memorabilia in it. We had some slight confusion when we first arrived, because the Museum-house was definitely the one we wanted, but at first we went up another that had a vibe of being much more recent; someone evidently took one of the units and painted all over its interior. I'm glad we figured out the clarification and went to the original guy. As far as I know, the rest of the units are just people living in them as regular homes.
Rotterdam Central Library I took this shot on our way from Markthal to the Cube Houses—this building is across the public square from the east end of Markthal—and I had no idea it's the usual building for the Rotterdam Central Public Library. I just thought it was interesting with all its giant yellow tubing wrapped around its exterior. Then, after some slight trouble finding it, we got to what I only much later learned is the temporary location of their Central Library—no wonder it wasn't all that architecturally remarkable! It turns out the original library building closed for renovations last year, and is set to reopen with a new addition in either late 2028 or early 2029, depending on the source. Still, as has become our custom when exploring the Central Public Library in new cities, we worked our way to the top of the current, temporary building—or at the very least, the top floor we could access, which was floor 7, I believe—and worked our way back down to the bottom. The Central Library in Amsterdam was much more interesting, but now I know why; if we had been in Amsterdam a year earlier or three years later, the Rotterdam Central Library would clearly have been the more interesting one.
Friday, July 31 Den Haag Centraal The Hague was somewhat of a mixed bag, at least when compared to Rotterdam, where there are far more things to do; but, I'm still really glad we went, even if three of the things on my list for this city either didn't pan out at all or didn't pan out the way I wanted them to. Shobhit got to a point about halfway through the day when he felt like we might have been better off staying in Amsterdam, but I was all about making the most of the day. Side note: Den Haag Centraal Station is itself pretty cool, especially from inside. To the left you can see the elevated platform that the trains run through; it can also be seen from outside the station here.
Royal Library of the Netherlands The Royal Library of the Netherlands is quite close to Den Haag Centraal, but guess what? There is no public access to the book shelves! Not unless you have a membership, anyway. A young woman working a reception counter in the very lovely lobby area noted that we could view some of the book stacks through windows on one side of the room. Then Shobhit noticed coffee at a little coffee machine in this reception area, and that became the most exciting part of the visit, for him. While walking through the connected National Archive building on our way out, he spilled some of that coffee on the floor. A very nice woman working another nearby little cafe not only gave him some napkins to wipe it up with, but offered to let him come behind the counter and wash his hands in her sink afterward.
Peace Palace I tried very, very hard to book a guided tour at The Hague's Peace Palace, which houses both the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It opened in 1913 with the help of the Carnegie Foundation (which Andrew Carnegie created just for this purpose, so it could be funded legally), 14 years after the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, from which the Permanent Court of Arbitration was born. Anyway, touring buildings and institutions like this is sometimes tricky business, with things like timed entry, limited availability, and minimum time beforehand needed for booking. I tried several times to book a guided tour over the few weeks before our trip, but no availability would show up on their online calendar. We walked to the building anyway, and I'm glad we did: it turns out there were no guided tours happening that day, no public access to the building at all—but, their visitor center was still open, which is large enough and full of enough displays that we could still do an audio tour, and so we did. I will admit we rushed through it a bit; I was disappointed not to get inside the building, but what I did see and hear was still very interesting.
The Hague Tower Here's one that it seemed was not going to pan out—and then it did! The Hague Tower, which you can only climb to its ~85-meter (~279 ft) observatory with a guided tour at 2:00, which was not fully clear to us when we first reached the tower at about 1:10, and the door was closed and locked on the side with just a small poster about visiting the tower. There was no wifi available right there, so we went to a nearby restaurant that turned out to be spectacular, called Zebedeüs. Shobhit had gone immediately to the bathroom when we sat at our table, and the young waiter immediately came up and started speaking to me in Dutch. When I apologized and said I only spoke English, he immediately switched to his own very good English, which is quite common. I did get wifi at this restaurant, and the waiter even tried to help us with what little he knew about The Hague Tower's hours of operation, but between that and certain pages of their website only loading in Dutch, we didn't get anywhere. Instead, we ordered a burrata dish that was spectacular; and then, when we discovered their wifi password was "pecan pie," we decided that clearly meant we had to have a slice of their pecan pie. Both were so good that we told our young waiter that Zebedeüs was the best place we had been so far in The Hague, which made him very happy.
But, we hadn't been to The Hague Tower yet! And when we were done at Zebedeüs, we walked back over to the tower, right at 2:00, and this time they were not only open, but had openings for the guided tour, which involved climbing 288 steps on very narrow staircases. It actually was kind of exhausting—but worth it! There are three landing levels where we could rest for a bit and our volunteer tour guide could speak to us all—for the first quarter or so of the tour, he spoke first in Dutch and then in English, having been told the tour would need to be bilingual; it turned out there were no Dutch people on the tour, though, and the one family he thought was Dutch was actually German. They told him he could just do the entire tour in English. Anyway, the above shot was one I took when the tour guide told us they used the same carpenters as those who make the Netherlands' famous windmills to construct the wooden beams in this tower. One of the landings was also just below the tower's four bells, all of which are centuries old, like the tower itself; I even got a very brief video of the last incredibly loud gong while we were standing beneath them ("I warned you!" the tour guide said, shortly after the ringing scared the shit out of several of us).
But, of course, here's why I really wanted to go up The Hague Tower: the view! I researched at least one observation deck of some kind or another in every city we planned to visit, and this was the only one I found in the Hague. This city, at about 549,000 within its city limits, is the third-largest in the Netherlands—but, it is the most densely populated, at 17,200/sq mi (6,650/km2). Compare to Amsterdam, the largest city with nearly twice the city population, with a fourth-highest density of 13,670/sq mi (5,277/km2). For comparison purposes for people local to my own Seattle region, Seattle's density is 9,302.2/sq mi (3,591.59/km2). It's worth noting that of all non-microstates in Europe, the Netherlands has the highest overall population density. This is a region roughly the size of the U.S. states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined, with a total population of about 18.4 million people. (The combined population of Massachusetts and Connecticut is about 10.8 million.) Anyway, this high density in the Hague is clearly reflected in its city center skyline, the only one among the Dutch major cities where nearly all of its tall buildings are close together in one area. In both Amsterdam and Rotterdam, for example, there are multiple smaller clusters of building skylines in different parts of the city. So: I don't know if Shobhit would agree, even though he clearly did also enjoy the Hague Tower tour (this is part of the St. James Church, built between the 14th and 16th centuries, but for me, this alone made it worth the day trip to the Hague. [posted 9:22am]