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Previously on Alex's Holland Album: After biking to Leiden, Delft, and Gouda (with a day trip to Oudewater), we bid a tearful farewell to our trusty fiets. And today we arrive in Rotterdam, where everything is taller and shinier.
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But other things haven't changed. There's still Belgian beer in its correctly assigned glassware.
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I failed to include something for scale, but trust me when I tell you that these meringues are the size of a human head.
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There's quite a lot of it. If you're not careful, you can easily hurt your neck gaping at all the buildings.
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Since I mentioned architecture, you're probably eager to see Piet Blom's famous cube houses, so here they are.
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I'm not sure what we're looking at here. There's an overwhelming volume of striking modern structures. Also, please note that I don't the difference between modern, postmodern, and contemporary when it comes to buildings. I'm just trying to say "not old."
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Now this is truly amazing. In Holland, you can place a sticker on your mailbox indicating which kinds of junk mail can and cannot be placed into it.
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Inside the Market Hall (completed in 2014). Note tower from previous pic behind the arch. We're still in the cube house neighborhood.
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Rotterdam is not entirely without canals. They're just wider and more sparsely distributed.
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Luckily for us (ok, mostly me) one of the current exhibits is a collection of hand-painted movie posters from Ghana and Nigeria.
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The exhibit is open through September, so you should really stop looking at this album and go book your ticket to Rotterdam immediately.
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Snakes are a major theme in the posters. Snake girls. Snakes coming out of people's mouths. Snakes all around. In short, it's all totally amazing.
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And the gallery it's in has this spooky mesh floor/ceiling thing. The exhibit spans two floors. Floor one is mostly movies I've never heard of, presumably made in Africa?
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On floor two, looking down on Thomas (only in the literal sense). The second floor features some well known US films.
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Doesn't this make you want to (re)watch Splash immediately? As you can see, there are some non-horror posters. (Though that mermaid tail is suspiciously snakelike.)
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Though mostly it's horror. I'm very impressed by the quality on the snakeskin jacket Jason (?) is wearing here. Let's see the Dutch masters top that.
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And now off to Rotterdam's train station, which is (of course) another piece of snazzy architecture.
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Antwerp's train station is more old school. This photo doesn't do it justice, nor does it capture the strange escalators that plateau in the middle before ascending again.
