Wind Mills and Hand Made Chocolates
It has been a few busy weeks with the last leg of my Europe trip and U.S. National Parks tour. Here’s a make up post for Netherlands and Belgium.
I went from Munich to Rotterdam overnight on six different trains, it seemed more interesting when I booked the train tickets, the actual travel was a mix of battling sleepiness and hurrying across platforms to catch the next train. I wasn’t the only person doing the complicated transfers, I met a Chinese student who was studying art in Austria, she made the same train schedule twice within three days as she wanted to see Amsterdam over the weekend!
Rotterdam was nearby multiple cities, I went to Amsterdam, Delft, Utretch, the Hague, and Kinderdijk which were all within a couple of hours from Rotterdam. My airbnb host took me on a bike tour to Kinderdkijk to see lots and lots of wind mills. One our way home, we had some traditional dutch food and beers.
Next day, I went to a fashion trade show with my friend Lin Jie. She was studying the fashion industry trade between Netherlands and China and it happened that there was a trade show going on while I was visiting. There were hundreds and hundreds of brands in the convention and it was cool to see the newest European fashion all at once.
Amsterdam was lively and everyone seemed to be busy exploring water channels, art scenes, and coffee shops, I enjoyed Amsterdam, but I preferred the more quite and old fashioned Delft. The famous painter Vermeer was inspired by the streets of Delft and you could quickly see why. The streets were composed of flowers and plants next to water channels with occasional boats passing by. It was a perfect location for some quiet time.
Rotterdam expressed its character through architectures, there were many buildings with unorthodox structures. It was fun seeing these colorful and oddly shaped buildings next to each other. My favorite was the cube houses:
After a few days in Netherlands, I took a train to Antwerp, Belgium. Antwerp was the most diverse city I visited on this trip, it was a melting pot for people coming from all over the world. Besides being diverse, Antwerp was famous for hand made chocolates and being a fashion capital. They also had comic walls sprinkled all over the city, people here loved comics and board games.
One of the highlights of my trip was meeting up with Brendan in Ghent. Con Brio was playing in the Gent Jazz Festival, unfortunately, I had to catch the last train home so I couldn’t stay for the set.
I made my way out to the sculpture garden on my last day in Belgium. There were over 200 pieces of sculptures in the park. It was fun strolling around and spotting random art pieces. Some of them provoked my imagination, but some of them were way to abstract for me to comprehend.
