Our home this week was the Novotel, a business hotel in the business area of Rotterdam called “Brainpark”. Our generous room on the 13th floor provided a grand view to the east of an office park area that Arjan says was just fields when he was a kid. The room was comfortable and the breakfast buffet was bountiful, so it was a most convenient place to settle into for our visits with Arjan’s lifelong friends.
The weather this week was typically Dutch, which means that it changes from minute to minute. The weather could be called variably cloudy most of the time, with brief showers or downpours occurring quite suddenly, or bits of sunshine breaking through. We had one gorgeous day on Sunday (June 19), and one truly horrendous day on Monday (June 20), when pouring rain and wind blew in our faces, making walking outdoors extremely unpleasant.
Highlights of the week included:
Saturday, June 18: After a quiet day with Arjan’s friends Gerard and Diane, the four of us dined at De Harmonie, an up-scale restaurant in a residential neighborhood of Rotterdam.
Sunday, June 19: In the morning, Arjan and I joined the crowds climbing a temporary outdoor staircase up the side of the Groot Handels Gebouw, an 8-story office building. In the afternoon, we took a day trip with Arjan’s friends Koos and Yuk Ying to visit the German bunkers near Noordwijk. [Since this was such an eventful day, it deserves a blog entry of its own.]
Monday, June 20: We took public transportation here and there to do some shopping and handle administrative details. Not only did we have the worst weather of the trip so far, most of our errands were unsuccessful as well. Maybe we should write this day off! Well, I did get my own Dutch metro card for the first time, and we had a nice dinner at Gerard and Diane’s lovely home in the Alexander polder area of Rotterdam.
Tuesday, June 21: Arjan, Gerard, and I visited their friend John at his summer cottage in Ouddorp, on the North Sea. We walked on the beach at low tide and had lunch with John in the center of the village.
Wednesday, June 22: Arjan and I walked in a recreation area along the Rotter lakes (Rottemeren) and stopped at an outdoor tea room at the end. On the way out of the park, we drove past “Mount Rotter”, a plastic ski hill that gives us a laugh every time. Dinner was outdoors at a restaurant called “In Den RustWat” (IDRW).
During our stay in Rotterdam, we enjoyed two “dining experience” restaurants with Arjan’s friends Gerard and Diane: De Harmonie on Saturday (June 18), and IDRW on Wednesday (June 22).
What I mean by a “dining experience” is a restaurant where small course after small course is presented so exquisitely that the general emphasis is almost as much on how the food looks as what it tastes like.
De Harmonie was the more formal of the two and the portions were truly tiny. You can order courses à la carte for 15 euro apiece, or leave the choices to the chef, starting at 5 courses for 55 euro. One of the amuse-bouches (pre-meal tastes from the chef) was a tiny ice cream cone about an inch-and-a-half tall, with corn sorbet and a mint leaf.
At IDRW on Thursday, the evening was so fine that we sat outside. The waitstaff at IDRW is more casual than at De Harmonie, and the portions are not tapas style, but the concepts are just as good. They also served a tiny ice cream cone, this time slightly larger and based on melon. The tiny ice cream cone must be an “in” thing right now. Foam soups seem to be, too.
Photograph © 2016 P.J. Gardner. All rights reserved.