spiderbraids

The next morning, guess what I found on the TV schedule...

Let's watch it then :-)

Here's a nice early morning shot of Rotterdam.

The weekend Blaak Market. Fish, vegetables, spices, spring rolls, flowers, shoes, you name it, they got it.

After taking in the market, we take a walking tour of Rotterdam, including the Cubic Houses.

And here's a close up of one of the houses.

After the walking tour, a road trip.

The Netherlands is, of course, famous for windmills. Even now, they're still using (more modern) windmills for (presumably) power generation.

After crossing a few bridges and dikes, we arrive in Zierikzee, with its distinctive clock tower/city gate.

Lunch time at a Boa Tarde, a Portuguese restaurant. Seafood soup, sardines with mayonnaise, prawn salad, bread with two different kinds of spread, rice and fries... And note the rather small bottle of lemon soda. It's about 1 euro and fills up a bit more than one glass. Back home, one can get a bottle that can fill two glasses for about the equivalent of 20 euro-cents (!)

The busy (and narrow!) shopping street in Zierikzee.

Out of sequence, here's what I bought in Zierikzee: a Winx ministicker album. Judging from the discount from 7 Euros to 4, it must have been on the shelves for a while...

Boats coming up the stream.

After Zierikzee, we briefly hit the beach at Port Zelande, which is on reclaimed land.

A jellyfish, and seaweed.

More scenery during the drive.

More modern windmills off the A15 near Spijkenisse...

And more traditional windmills at Kinderdijk. This site is actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the major tourist destinations in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands takes biking seriously. Many of their roads have a bike lane on the hard shoulder, and in some places (like here in Kinderdijk), one can even find a map detailing the bike routes available in the area.

Back in Rotterdam, time to have dinner and veg out in front of the TV. In the Netherlands, many non-Dutch channels are available on cable. Here, on BBC1, we see Matt Smith asking a museum curator about Van Gogh's paintings, on the premiere broadcast of an episode of Doctor Who.

"Wachters, verenig je!" While most of the former Jetix's programs transitioned straight to the new Disney XD boy-oriented branding, a few girl-skewing shows such as W.i.t.c.h. and Totally Spies moved to regular Disney. (Hmm, shouldn't their wings be a blur...?)