"Pieter Jan and Family" a Rotterdam Travel Page by Rixie

On a grey, drizzly day in August, we gathered our rain gear and ventured out to Café Engels, next to the Centraal Station, where we met my VT friend Pieter Jan, his wife Swanèt, and their son René. We spent a wonderful, fun-filled day with them, exploring different parts of the city together. We are so grateful to them for making our trip to Rotterdam a memorable one.

We saw these sand sculptures in a shopping mall in Rotterdam Centrum.

We walked past the Wittehuis, the only surviving pre-war building in the downtown section.

There's an open-air market near the Beurstraverse every Tuesday and Saturday, so we browsed through the stalls of food, clothes, fabric, purses, and other merchandise. There were huge wheels of cheese, Indian spices, live shellfish that resembled clams in snail shells, packets of Dutch licorice and English Smarties.

Swanèt and I both liked the Turner & Hooch dog, tongue lolling from his mouth. She translated the Dutch saying on his bib: "Tasty!"

I liked these two photos that Kelly took of me, Swanèt, and Pieter Jan near the Delfshaven windmill, because I think they show a basic difference between men and women. When Kelly said, "Smile!", PJ was ready immediately, but Swanèt and I had to make ourselves pretty first!

This is where my first VT passport picture came from.

We took the metro to Delfshaven but took the tram on the return trip, so that we could see more of the city. Alas, we found that the used record shops PJ was interested in seeing closed at 17:00...just the time we reached there. But we had a nice Italian meal at Pirandello, another time when having Dutch speakers with us came in handy. I understood the Italian names of the dishes, but not the ingredients, which were written in Dutch.
It was a great day with our VT friends!