Aspects of research

It's probably quite obvious, but you want to have an idea about where your going, about the things in the cities that you're going to. I mean, imagine coming to Christchurch and not going to the square and seeing that massive cup/chalice thing made of leaves! You might as well have not even come!

The idea here, is I'm going to research some places, and then write about it. You think that's boring? Well I've got news for you buddy, it's my blog and I'll write what I damn well want to write. Also, if you hate history, well, you're (not) in luck, because this blog isn't just fun, it's edufuncational!

Anyway, Rotterdam. We leave Amsterdam on a boat to Rotterdam despite the fact that it's like an hour on the train, in fact, I just learned, only 80kms. We're taking an easycruise which is a cruise ship, but don't let yourselves think that it's a luxury cruise liner, it's a ship with cabins, and it's about as cheap as normal accomodation, only you're moving. So, we get to Rotterdam at 1pm and then have to leave by 4am the next morning. So we get the afternoon to do what we can in the city, have dinner, wander/drink and then get back.

Here is what Rotterdam looks like:



Holy moly! I didn't know we'd be catching up with Christopher Columbus! Also, did you know that blogger has terrible html when you use it to add images. I had to edit the html because it looked ugly? html should look somewhat sexy but always decent and in control.

Rotterdam has the biggest port in Europe. They do a lot of shipping there I assume. Rotterdam also has a Tax Museum. The population is about 600,000. Apparently there is a reasonable amount of northern African inhabitants that live in or around streets, which also apparently isn't really an issue, despite the fact that there has been recent tension between the native Dutch and Muslims.

The natural centre of the city was bombed away in WWII, so there's a lot of new architecture (sweet) but the city lacks a centralised "feel", or so they say.

Since Rotterdam has like 14 million museums, no doubt we'll have to check a couple out, which ones though I don't know. I'm not personally all that interested in art history, but they have an architecture museum and this one with a really weird website. They also have a zoo with an aquarium, and Alice loves aquariums, so we should probably go there! They also have a massive tall thing, one of those things cities do so they can be better than others. This one is called the Euromast Space Tower, and has been extended a number of times to retain records.

There doesn't actually appear to be a whole lot else in the city, I mean, I'm sure there is, but Rotterdam isn't a massive tourist destination, so a lot of the experiencing we're going to have to do is just that, experiencing the city, which is fine by me, even though as I mentioned the city doesn't really have a centre, so it might not be easy.


Antwerp is no longer the Netherlands, it's Belguim. It's one last stop before Brussels. "Antwerp, the second biggest city in Belgium and also one of the biggest ports in Europe, is the capital of the province of the same name. As well as being at the forefront of the diamond industry, it’s also well known as one of the most up-and-coming fashion design centres in Europe."

This handy guide informs me.. It too has more museums than McDonalds, so maybe we could drop by some of them. We really are going to be spoilt for choice with Museums in Europe, but in these two places, we're only going to have a few hours of day-time, so mabye we might have to skip them just to do some other things, although, in these relatively old cities that aren't real touristy, maybe there won't be all that much else to do, tourist wise. There will always be lots to see, as in, look at but not all that much to do. We might have to find a "trendy" bar and sit and drink the day away, as Antwerp is meant to be quite a fashionable city, although, I'm sure that means that I just won't fit in.

I guess there's not a lot of point trying to work out too much about these cities any more than I've done. I guess when we get there these cities hopefully will be a bit more obvious, and I'm sure that we'll see the bunches of drunks that are on the cruise with us, which will make it interesting too.