Rotterdam, Netherlands

Monday 15th April After our goodbyes with Cú we made our way into Leiden for the 8pm train to Rotterdam.

The train only took 30mins! It's hard to get our heads around major cities within a country being that close to each other!

As soon as we arrived we liked the vibe of Rotterdam, it seems like a very cool city and ironically enough the area we were staying in was the called the "Cool District", I promise I'm not joking.

We were staying at the City Hub which was a super cool hostel! Everything was electronic, it felt very futuristic! We checked in at a self serve station and were given wristbands which are used to activate everything. They were our key to the building, the elevator, our room, and to make any purchases at the self serve bar!

There is a staff member there 24/7 and she explained how everything worked and gave us a portable pocket wifi box to have with us when we're out in the city! How cool is that?! I didn't know that existed!

We headed up to our room and they are pods! It was so cool, we were in a top pod. So we entered our little room and it had some shelves, steps, and a big bed! They also provided robes and towels for the shower!

The best feature of the room was probably the fact that you could control the lights with an app on your phone!

So you can choose what colour you want the lights from a colour scale, or you can choose a scene! So there was forest, sunset, disco, and romance ooh la la. Our favourite was forest! There was also inbuilt bluetooth speakers which was so cool! The pods were also completely soundproof so you could crank those tunes!

After excitedly exploring all the features of our pod we headed downstairs and chilled in the hangout area. They provided free lemon and lime infused water which was such a nice little touch.

After a little while we decided we fancied some ice cream so set out to find some. The area we were staying was really nice, it felt safe, and had good vibes, it was full of young people milling around outside pubs and enjoying cafes, restaurants, and eateries. It just feels super artsy with the vibes and post modern architecture. It has a really nice feel to it and is super clean too.

We found a little ice cream shop at the end of the street and after enjoying our little treat back at the hostel we headed to bed and fell asleep to forest lights and surround sound David Attenborough.

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Tuesday 16th April

We woke up in our little pod which was sooo cool! We had no idea what time it was though because it was pitch black inside and completely soundproof, I thought it was maybe 4am, turns out the sun was well and truly up! It was like being in one of the airport hotels when the outside timing of the world is slightly irrelevant.

We put our robes on for the fun of it and headed to the bathrooms for a shower. The bathrooms are so nice, really big and clean. It's like an upmarket camping bathroom block. There was a basket for used towels, and spare towels available. Paper towel and hand dryers, and the showers had shampoo and body wash in them! The shower heads were nice and big as well and had nice and hot water with great pressure.

Our first stop of the day was the massive futuristic looking market hall! We had a walk around this insane building and then headed inside to check it out. It was really really cool! It was full of all different kinds of food. I don't think there was any stall that sold the same products. There were fresh fruit stands, yogurt stalls, bitterballen, crockets, spices, pancakes, waffels, fish, mexican, everything you could imagine!

We had a gozleme for lunch and it was so delish, honestly the best one I've had. It was full of donner meat, spinach, feta, and corn. The way it was set up meant that we could see the whole process of them making it which was really fascinating.

After our gozleme we changed cuisines and indulged in some traditional Poffertjes (dutch pancakes), they were so gooood and covered in some kind of powdered sugar that sort of tasted like maple syrup.

After our market experience we wandered over to check out the intriguing yellow cube houses.

They're fascinating, and such an interesting piece of architecture. I wonder what the space inside of them is like.

From here we walked around the cool district and down by the harbour, following the waters edge to the Erasmusbrug bridge, otherwise known as The Swan.

It was a really nice walk and an interesting contrast between the two sids of the river. On the far side we could see traditional dutch housing lining the waters edge, and on the side we were walking, funky buildings.

We ended up walking through the flag parade down by the harbour and found Australia's flag!

We then spent the rest of the afternoon chilling at the hostel, and may or may not have nipped out for a lemon sorbet in that time!

We spent some time in our pod catching up on admin and practical tasks, before we headed back down to the bar where we poured ourselves some drinks!

It was really fun! We scanned our little wrist bands and had the experience of being a bartender! We chilled down at the bar enjoying the place.

We had seen pictures that the market place lights up at night and it looked pretty impressive so we wandered out to have a look. Well, there were no lights on and it was all closed, so we headed back to the hostel via the grocery store to pick up dinner.

We heated up our meals in the microwave and chilled over dinner, before enjoying our forest pod for the last night.

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Wednesday 17th April

We had a nice chill morning in our pod before popping on our gowns and heading to the shower block (I still can't believe we were given gowns!).

We packed up and said one last goodbye to our pod before heading downstairs and checking out. We scanned our wristbands, paid and were having a chat with the staff about how cool the place was when the owner, a really lovely old American guy said that we could keep our wristbands as a momento of the place!

We hung out in the hostel for a bit before catching the train back to Amsterdam.

We were staying in the Ibis Airport Hotel as we had a really early flight the following day and we knew the hotel shuttle bus started at 4:30am which was perfect.

The train ride was great, so much better than leaving Amsterdam! It was a doubledecker train and we were up the top by the window, allowing us to watch the tulip fields as we went by.

The really cool thing about Amsterdam Airport is that it is also the major train station, which is fantastic! More cities should do this! It makes so much sense that the major station connects to the airport. It also feels kind of strange though because it is masssssiiiivvveeee and you forget that the airport is there.

We grabbed some lunch and breakfast for tomorrow at the station, because there is everything you can imagine there, it's also almost like a shopping centre!

The hotel shuttle then collects us from the station/airport and we head to the hotel. Again, the hotel is huge! It even had escalators in it! And restaurants on every floor!

We both had a little nap and then worked on stuff for the afternoon, before grabbing some dinner and enjoying our last night in the Netherlands.