Rotterdam

ROTTERDAM (good food and great subways):

With only a few hours to explore this city, we visited a local café where we ate the “famous apple pie”. I don’t recall ever in my life hearing of Rotterdam’s apple pie, which means it can’t be very famous. But, once I tasted it, I thought it should be, cause it’s yum-my. They also have these amazing waffle cookies in the Netherlands that I wish I had bought a bag of! They give them to you when you order a cappuccino or coffee. And you put them over the cup so the waffle warms up. YUM!

We also went shopping in the City Center and ate at a cozy pub. I had the best salad of my life: A giant hockey-puck disc of warm goat cheese, drizzled with balsamic and honey, and accompanied by bits of roasted walnuts. Oh, and there was a little bit of lettuce to make it seem like it was a salad. It was perfection!

I also got to see a roadside marionette oom-pah-pah show that had giant wooden clogs you could stand in. This was great!

My biggest impression of Rotterdam was: It has the most civilized public transportation I have ever experienced. The subway employees are helpful and friendly, the trains are clean and clearly marked, and even the platforms had large clocks with accurate waiting times for the next train. NY, Chicago, Boston, take heed. The Dutch got it right.