Day 14 (July 19, 2018): Gouda and Rotterdam

To boil it down, today was all about cheese and modern architecture. As part of our "two cities per day" approach, we took the train to Gouda (yes, there is a town named Gouda and they DO make cheese!) at 9AM for the weekly cheese market there.  Half the tourists in Holland must have shown up, as well as most of the city of 70,000.  We enjoyed the cheesie atmosphere, did an in-depth tour of the large cathedral, climbed our first windmill, and at noon, took a train back to Rotterdam to get to know the city where we have been staying since Tuesday but haven’t yet explored. 

The Rotterdam experience was focused on the modern architecture the city is known for.  The destruction of the city by the German Luftwaffe in May 1940, as horrific as it was, prepared the way for one of Europe's most modern cities to take shape, and the experimental architecture is now famous.

A few other neat experiences were thrown into the afternoon, and we sewed it all up with a Mediterannean dinner at the massive food hall we mentioned on Tuesday.  Another early start awaits, so I must sew up this blog entry, too!

Gouda's train station shows a wooden relief carving of the town's history of... CHEESE!

Welcome to Gouda! Cheese, anyone?

Can you believe all these bicycles?!  This is a town of just 70,000 people, and look at all the bikes left by commuters at the station.

The town hall from 1619.

Is that Pam trying to make off with a big ole' Gouda in Gouda?! Oh great - last thing we need is to get booted out of town!

The weekly Gouda cheese auction is underway.

Cheese, cheese and more cheese!

Pam being weighed by the very yellowly-dressed official Cheese Weigher.

This is the Waag - a former cheese weighing house built in 1668.

Even the townsfolk showed up to sing some local folk songs -- probably about cheese!  (We couldn't understand the Dutch lyrics.)

St. John's Church from the 1300s, one of the longest churches in the Netherlands.  The church has a massive collection of stained glass windows.  The town actually removed all the windows  and buried them in farmers' fields, etc. to protect them from the Nazis.

This window tells the story of the death and destruction of WWII and the liberation in 1945.

Gouda has a great windmill, which we climbed to the 5th floor via ladders.


And now, let's turn to Rotterdam, with a focus on architecture:

Rotterdam's city hall, rebuilt after the WWII bombardment. 

This is exactly the sort of thing Rotterdam is known for:  bold and daring architectural ideas.  Here you see a steel and glass bump-out on a traditional stone building.

This is Laurens Church, which was destroyed in WWII's bombardment and rebuilt.

Beurs World Trade Center, one of the many brilliant modern buildings in Rotterdam.

Modern art, modern bridge, and modern architecture all in one shot!

Monument to the victims of WWII, juxtaposed against yet another amazing example of modern architecture..

.
The Euromast Tower from 1970 provides greats vistas.

A port view from Euromast.

A port view from Euromast.

The SS Rotterdam (of the Holland-America Line) is permanently moored in Rotterdam.

The very freaky thing about the Euromast Tower is that you can climb many stories via exterior staircase when you reach the already-scarily-high Observation Deck.  

The Rotterdam Museum has a branch that focuses solely on the 1940 Nazi bombardment. Over 1300 bombs were dropped that day, killing 800 unsuspecting and innocent citizens, flattening much of the city and starting a firestorm that burned for days.

Modern art:  Rotterdam is filled with it!

Rotterdam's port is the world's largest.  The Maritime Museum has a huge collection of permanently-moored ships.  One of them is this "alien-looking" craft.  It went into use in the early 1900s and decimated the employment of men to do the work of unloading and weighing flour at the port. 

There are bikes of every kind EVERYWHERE.  Actually, this is a Segway, modified to carry the entire family.




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