from holland with love

Yesterday I made my first trip to Rotterdam, where my friend Melissa lives. Her, Jess, and I spent the day walking around the city: we made our way through the shopping district, stopping in all the swoon worthy stores. Then stopped in 101 Pannekoeken (which was located right on the corner of Pancake Street!) for some world famous pancakes. It was kind of neat because the kitchen was right out in the open, and we had a table next to it, so we could watch the chef make all the pancakes and poffertjes. Boy, was he ever skilled! He flipped those pancakes and poffertjes with such ease! (For those back home, poffertjes are bite sized pancakes that are generally served with a dollop of butter and icing sugar, but you can also eat them with other toppings).

We took a peak at a market, where I found some great deals on souvenirs. Took a tour of Kubus Woningen (the cubic houses), which are exactly what they sound like: cube shaped houses! While they're really neat, aesthetically, they don't look like a very cozy place to live. But perhaps it was because the show version had no carpets or comfy looking furniture.

After looking around the shopping district a little more, we headed back to Melissa's for a very delicious home cooked meal by her host parents, Robert and Ineke, followed by the best of the best olliebollen (the first of the season!), and pepernotjes, both very traditional Dutch holiday goodies.

And then we got ourselves ready to party!

A while ago, we bought tickets for Full on Ferry, a masquerade party hosted by Ferry Corsten. Being a lover of trance, I was really looking forward to this party, especially knowing the magnitude of trance parties in Europe.

Since it fell on Halloween weekend, we figured it was a Halloween party, and got ourselves all dressed up: I as a 50s housewife, Melissa as a soccer player, and Jess as a cop. We found out pretty quickly that we were one of the only ones dressed up. Mostly people came in normal clothes and masquerade masks, and very few were actually dressed up. A lot of people were very confused as to why we were dressed up. We got a lot of comments and stares, and by the end of the night, we were all pretty annoyed with it. We decided that it was just a coincidence they decided to hold this party on Halloween weekend, even though it was advertised as a masquerade party. (For those who don't know, Halloween is a very very new concept in Europe, having only started to make its way over within the past few years. It's not nearly as celebrated here, but we made the assumption that this would be a costume party for Halloween).

So anyway, the stage show was AMAZING. There was fire, and visuals, and the stage actually floated! It was this UFO looking stage surrounded by lights, anchored to the ceiling, which actually lifted off the ground and floated over the audience. And the platform that the DJs were standing on inside the floating stage rotated as well. It was really neat to just stand at the back of the room and watch all this happening, while thousands of people danced and threw their hands in the air. It's really unfortunate that my camera decided to die just as the stage was taking off. I really wanted to capture it on film because I knew trying to explain it wouldn't give it any justice. So as soon as I can find a video, I'll post it for you all to see!

And aside from the stage show, the music was incredible. It's too bad dancing in heels is next to impossible! I normally don't wear heels out dancing, but it was part of the costume, and it just wouldn't look the same in sneakers. ;)

I think, though, that they ripped us off on the drinks. They must have watered down the drinks, or have been serving non-alcoholic booze, because none of us had even a buzz! Those cheap bastards!

Well, that is my weekend in a nutshell. I hope I can make it back to Rotterdam soon, preferably on a nicer day as it was pretty cold and rainy yesterday. I'd love to check out some more of the interesting architecture, and see more of the city.

I uploaded a few photos to Flickr, but not many. For now, I will leave you with a photo of us girls taken at the party last night. I hope everyone back home had a safe and fun Halloween!