{"id":350,"date":"2016-06-22T17:25:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T21:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/?p=350"},"modified":"2016-08-07T02:13:22","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T06:13:22","slug":"june-18-22-visiting-in-rotterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/2016\/06\/22\/june-18-22-visiting-in-rotterdam\/","title":{"rendered":"June 18 – 22: Visiting in Rotterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our home this week was\u00a0the Novotel, a business hotel in the business area of Rotterdam called\u00a0\u201cBrainpark\u201d. Our generous room on the 13th floor provided a grand view to the east of an office park area that Arjan says was just fields when he was a kid. \u00a0The room was comfortable and the breakfast buffet was bountiful, so it was\u00a0a most convenient\u00a0place to settle into for our visits with Arjan\u2019s lifelong friends.<\/p>\n

\"Novotel,
Novotel, Rotterdam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The weather this week was\u00a0typically Dutch, which means that it changes from minute to minute. The weather could be called variably\u00a0cloudy most of the time, with brief showers or downpours occurring quite suddenly, or\u00a0bits of sunshine breaking through. We had one gorgeous day\u00a0on\u00a0Sunday (June 19), and one truly horrendous day\u00a0on Monday (June 20), when pouring rain and wind blew in our\u00a0faces, making walking outdoors extremely\u00a0unpleasant.<\/p>\n

Highlights of the week included:<\/p>\n

Saturday, June 18:<\/strong> After a quiet day with Arjan\u2019s friends Gerard and Diane, the four of us dined at De Harmonie, an up-scale restaurant in a residential neighborhood of Rotterdam.<\/p>\n

Sunday, June 19:<\/strong> In the morning, Arjan and I\u00a0joined the crowds climbing a temporary outdoor staircase up the side of the Groot Handels Gebouw, an 8-story office building.\u00a0In the afternoon, we took a day trip with Arjan\u2019s\u00a0friends Koos and Yuk Ying to visit the\u00a0German bunkers near\u00a0Noordwijk. [Since this was such an eventful day<\/a>, it deserves a\u00a0blog entry of its own.]<\/p>\n

Monday, June 20:<\/strong> We took public transportation here and there to do some shopping and handle administrative details. Not only did we have the worst weather of the trip so far, most of our errands were unsuccessful as well. Maybe we should write this day\u00a0off!\u00a0 Well, I did get my own Dutch\u00a0metro card for the first time, and we had a nice dinner at Gerard and Diane\u2019s lovely home in the Alexander polder area of Rotterdam.<\/p>\n

Tuesday,\u00a0June 21:<\/strong> Arjan, Gerard, and I\u00a0visited their friend\u00a0John at his summer cottage\u00a0in Ouddorp, on the North Sea. We walked on the beach at low tide and had lunch with John in the center of the village.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, June 22:<\/strong> Arjan and I walked in a recreation area along the Rotter lakes (Rottemeren) and stopped at an outdoor tea room at the end. On the way out of the park, we\u00a0drove past\u00a0\u201cMount Rotter\u201d, a\u00a0plastic ski hill that gives us a laugh every time. Dinner was outdoors at a restaurant called\u00a0\u201cIn Den RustWat\u201d (IDRW).<\/p>\n

During our stay\u00a0in Rotterdam, we\u00a0enjoyed two\u00a0\u201cdining experience\u201d restaurants with Arjan\u2019s friends Gerard and Diane: De Harmonie on Saturday (June 18), and IDRW on Wednesday\u00a0(June 22).<\/p>\n

What I mean by a\u00a0\u201cdining experience\u201d is a restaurant where small\u00a0course after small\u00a0course is presented so\u00a0exquisitely that the general emphasis is almost as much on how the food looks\u00a0as what it tastes like.<\/p>\n

De Harmonie was the more formal of the two and the portions were truly tiny. You can order courses \u00e0 la carte for 15 euro apiece, or leave the choices to the chef, starting at 5 courses for 55 euro.\u00a0 One of the amuse-bouches (pre-meal tastes from the chef)\u00a0was a tiny ice cream cone about an inch-and-a-half tall, with corn sorbet and a mint leaf.<\/p>\n

At IDRW on Thursday, the evening was so fine that we sat outside. The waitstaff at IDRW is more casual than at De Harmonie, and the portions are not tapas style, but the concepts are just as good. They also served a tiny ice cream cone, this time slightly larger and based on melon. The tiny ice cream cone must be an \u201cin\u201d thing right now. Foam soups seem to be, too.<\/p>\n

Photograph \u00a9 2016 P.J. Gardner<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our home this week was\u00a0the Novotel, a business hotel in the business area of Rotterdam called\u00a0\u201cBrainpark\u201d. Our generous room on the 13th floor provided a grand view to the east of an office park area that Arjan says was just fields when he was a kid. \u00a0The room was comfortable and the breakfast buffet was … Continue reading “June 18 – 22: Visiting in Rotterdam”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}