We landed at 7:30 am after a great short flight. As I said to my seatmate, "this sure beats driving to Jersey, some else is at the wheel and I can watch a movie and play online solitaire!" Danny enjoyed the flight and trying all the food in its neat little airline dishes and watching his own movie screen. He chose HP part 2 and really got lost in it. Jerry's coworker drove up to Amsterdam to pick us up and Jer was happy to not rent a car on our first visit. We hit alot of traffic on the way down to Rotterdam, but we saw our first windmills, both modern wind turbine style and the old fashioned ones. The whole country is below sea level and as you are driving along and you are basically even with the water it is pretty bizarre! We arrived at our hotel and it is right on a canal, in the harbour in the centre of the city. The theme of the hotel is water, and the hallways are curved like a cruise ship and lit with a wavery blue light. The views are amazing from our window. The gist of the day went like this. Danny crashed in the car on the way to the hotel, then dragged himself upstairs and slept for two hours. Jerry went to coffee and meeting with bigwig Peter Penning who picked us up at the airport. I hopped on the computer and set up a date to view an apartment at 4pm...go me! The guy from Jer's company sent an email which did not impress me. He has one place for us to see Friday. We will see it, but meanwhile....I will take command, lol!
We all left the hotel at 1:30 and went right down to the harbor, a five minute walk. We got tickets for a 2pm harbor tour on a really cool boat(not the pancake boat)! the tour was about an hour and a half, excellent history, very cool views of the cargo shipping areas. Rotterdam was the largest shipping port in the world for a long time, and still is very busy with boats coming and going from all over the world. They had food on board and Danny got a hotdog (made with real meat mom!) and a huge piece of pie with real whipped cream. I had a coffee and ginger biscotti, yum!
We went back to the hotel and met up with Mabel the agent . She was a godsend! A friendly gal, with a rental and interior design business, so the furnished flats look like HGTV! She zoomed us around the city, sharing facts about neighborhoods,shopping,sports areas,etc. We saw one place that we loved, the house was old, rooms with lots of character ,neighborhood great, but the place was the second and third floors, and the stairs were at more than a 45 degree angle and the stair risers themselves were at the top only 2,3 inches wide. The climb was challenging, but the descent was like going down a ladder. We just thought "how could Molly do it?" Then we went to another place, totally different. Over the budget, as Allie knows always happens on House Hunters International! It is right on the water in an old electricity plant, totally industrial and super cool. Then when we were going there, Mabel said she had a brand new apartment that would be ready April 1, that was near the first neighborhood, by a park, and a lake with sailing and swimming. So she thought maybe we could stay in the loft one month, then move to the lake one. The apartment will be used in May for the National volleyball Team of Holland to come and stay in while they ready themselves for world competition. Kind of a cool idea, trying out one real city experience and one more suburban. I will attempt to contact other Realtors tomorrow to see if we can see more.
We found an awesome chicken place for dinner, they had spits turning in the restaurant with the chickens on them. Oh my was it good. Then back here for our water fun. The pool is lovely, on the 8th floor of the 16 floor hotel. There is also a sauna,steam room and large rain shower shower, with sea salt scrub to use. It was great to soothe our plane weary muscles, and after being up for 34ish hours we were ready for sleep!
