New and Old: A Weekend with Friends in Rotterdam and Delft

Many of our trips abroad have been focused on history - we've visited cities and towns with historical sites and stories packed with old charm. But just because a city has new architecture, doesn't mean it has no story. We found this out last weekend during our trip to Rotterdam.

Our friend and Aaron's co-worker, Monika, has been on an assignment working from the Amsterdam Russell office for the past few months. She did the same thing last year and we made a trip to visit her last February. We decided to make another trip to visit with Yacine, but this time chose the second largest city in the Netherlands- Rotterdam.

To give you a brief look into Rotterdam's story, the city was almost completely destroyed in WWII during the Rotterdam blitz, an aerial bombardment by the Germans in the 1940s. Because the Netherlands was positioned between Germany and Great Britain, Hitler wanted to use the country as an air and naval base. The Germans first tried to overtake The Hague, a city nearby that is home to the Dutch Royal family. After resistance from the Dutch army resulting in a stalemate, they turned their attention to Rotterdam because it was a huge industrial target (Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe). In total 1,150 bombs were dropped on Rotterdam. The Dutch soon surrendered but the damage was done and the city was basically destroyed.

Now 70 years later, the city is transformed. Huge skyscrapers and modern architecture make up the skyline. I wouldn't call it beautiful, but it is unique, modern and cool. It doesn't have the old charm, but it has a lot of character. We haven't really experienced another European city like it because truthfully, it just didn't feel like Europe.

We arrived on Friday night and played games at our Airbnb. Then we headed out and experienced a casino in the city that was filled with intense, solemn gamblers; hilarious but we didn't stay long.

Saturday morning we woke up and headed to a smaller city nearby, Delft. Delft lies in between The Hague and Rotterdam, and is where the Dutch Kings and Queens are buried. We had poffertjes (mini pancakes) and walked around the market square. We bought small Delftware mementos (a famous blue and white pottery made locally) and visited the town's windmill. The city was very quaint and reminded me of a smaller scale Amsterdam: picturesque houses in a row with beautiful detail, quaint canals, and lots of bikes everywhere!

We headed back to Rotterdam by train and then explored the modern architecture. We took a river cruise to Hotel New York which is a hotel built in the old Holland America headquarters. Then we made our way back to the downtown part of the city walking across the Erasmus bridge.

Rotterdam has a lot of sculptures and crazy architecture. To give a few examples: we saw a car protruding out from the top side of a building; there are "cube houses" that line one street; and the huge U-shaped Market Hall houses food vendors and restaurants but looks like something out of Singapore.

Saturday night we had an amazing local dinner. The menu at the restaurant was only in Dutch but luckily there was a woman sitting next to us who spoke perfect English and helped translate everything. It was a very happening restaurant and we ended up staying there pretty late just talking and enjoying each other's company.

It was a really nice weekend with great friends. And we got to see a glimpse into a European city with a very different story to tell. Variety is the spice of life, and Rotterdam has plenty of variety to offer!