Today we did a day trip to Rotterdam, south of Amsterdam (no, not all the names of towns in Holland end in “dam”).  We caught the Intercity train to Rotterdam Centraal and spent the day looking around the sights of this fair city.

Rotterdam is know for some striking examples of modern architecture, and we saw many of those today.  From an engineering standpoint, perhaps the most remarkable is the Erasmusbrug, a suspension bridge with only a single support tower at one end.

We also saw the Euromast, which gives a fantastic view of Rotterdam and the surrounding area from an observation deck 112m above sea level.  I ventured into the Euroscoop, which takes you to as high as is possible — approximately 185m!  That was a real adventure.

I also went looking for the building made famous (to fung-fu fans at least) as the building that Jackie Chan jumped from and slid down in the movie “Who Am I?”.  I’m pretty sure I found it, near the waterfront district, but it’s been a while since I saw the film and I couldn’t be totally sure.

A bit of shopping in the very extensive shopping district made the day complete.  Thank you Rotterdam!

That was us yesterday, as we took a “Canal-Bus” tour.  It’s the hop-on-hop-off style of tour that we’ve had in other cities, except this time it uses a canal boat instead of a bus.  Three different “lines”, and a total of 14 stops to visit — we managed to fill up the day quite nicely.  The ticket only cost €16 for all day usage; in fact, it’s still valid until midday today!

For the most part we simply stayed on board the boat and watched the city go by.  We hopped off at one stage to have some lunch — here’s ironic; for all our commentary about America recently, where did we go for lunch but the Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam.  The nice thing about the Canal-Bus service is that it provides three different tours of Amsterdam as well as the hop-on-hop-off facility.

We had another stroll around the city as well, including skirting the edges of the Red Light District, and a bit more shopping.

And, we saw the sun!  The cloud cover broke in the afternoon, allowing some sunlight through.