When I arrived in Rotterdam it was clear that this city was very different than the other ones I had seen in the Netherlands so far.  It was modern and the architecture was striking.  This modern architecture did come at a cost as I later learned as Rotterdam was bombed to nothing in 1940 as a power move by the Germans to try and force the Dutch to surrender.  The first striking building was the train station.

It was hard to capture it in a photo but pretty cool overall.  I didn’t have much planned in Rotterdam other than to visit a brewery I had been told about which just so happened to share a building with a Pinball museum!

I decided that I was in no rush to get there, so I wandered the city for a while and took in all of the sites.  I had a nap in the park and experienced the underground pedestrian tunnel that goes under the river.

It was two stories, one for bikes and one for pedestrians.  The main reason I wanted to check them out however is that the escalators that bring you down into the tunnel were made of wood!  They were built from 1937 to 1942 and survived the Nazi bombing mentioned earlier.  They were completed during Nazi occupation and a secret opening ceremony was held without the knowledge of the Nazis.

I ended up renting a moBike after the tunnel because there were a bunch around and I didn’t feel like walking for another hour.  I rode my bike to a warehouse area of Rotterdam which contained a large hipster market with different food vendors and a Brewery.  I enjoyed my lunch immensely but was excited to get to the Pinball museum next door.

They worked on a pay for x hours model, so I figured an hour and a half would be sufficient.

They had a bunch of new games I hadn’t played before such as Houdini and and a custom Matrix machine that was re-theme, but i couldn’t determine which machine it was based on.  I had a great time by myself and got to play a bunch of my favorites.

The stairs to the second level was also awesome!

After enjoying almost 2 hours of pinball, I decided to have one more beer from the brewery while chilling at the waterfront.

As I started wondering again, it appeared as though a giant cruise ship was preparing to disembark so I hung out and watched the process.  It was pretty cool to see such a large ship maneuver and get going.

It eventually sailed off into the sunset.

They had a harp type bridge there which I had now seen a few times, but I used it as an opportunity to take my sign picture.

I eventually made it to my hostel which I was pretty excited about because it was located in one of the coolest buildings I had ever slept in.  The building was made up of a bunch of cubes situated at various angles which also made the insides pretty interesting.

I chilled in the hostel for a little bit and then noticed that there was a festival happening right outside, so I took a stroll, grabbed some french fries and enjoyed the entertainment!

The festival was all in Dutch so i didn’t understand what was being said, but the music was pretty decent and was literally right outside of the hostel.

I ended up calling it quits a bit early that night as I wanted to work on my blog and do some planning for the next few stages of my adventure.

In the morning i got up and went for a run around Rotterdam.  It was a beautiful run along the water which gave me a view of some of the stuff a bit further up the river!

There were a ton of river cruise ships docked along the river and they look like a slightly smaller sized cruise ship with a few less amenities but overall would be more my style if i were to take a cruise because it goes up the river and stops at some of the smaller places.

After my run, I checked out of my Hostel and headed to the bus station where I would be leaving the Netherlands and headed towards BELGIUM!