Postcard: Rietveld Schroeder House (Utrecht)

What makes this house special: It was built in 1924, when it must have shocked its neighbors. It was designed by a furniture maker, Gerrit Thomas Reitveld, with no formal education (which shows in the house's increasing deterioration). Its upper floor transforms like a magic puzzle box, with all sorts of ingenious sliding doors and latching wall panels, from five rooms into one giant loft-like space. Still, I'm not sure why this house is on the World Heritage List when the Sonneveld house in Rotterdam is not. 

Bilbao: Vastly Underrated

When I was planning our trip to northern Spain, allotting one evening to Bilbao seemed more than adequate to accomplish the only thing I was told made Bilbao worthwhile (the Guggenheim).  But that one evening passed too quickly, and when midnight found us at Claudio's in the old town working our way through a plate of local jamon and chistorras, I regretted our rash decision to book tickets on a bus out of town at 9 the next morning.

My new-found love affair with Bilbao took root in the fertile ground of low expectations.  With everyone from the New York Times to our Spanish friends in Pamplona telling us Bilbao is nothing special (save, of course, for Frank Gehry's massive monument to modern art), we were free to discover the city for ourselves. 

Jeff Koons' giant puppy welcomes the city to the museum

Of course, the museum is all that and a bag of chips.  Its shape both inside and out is fluid and mysterious; it spills over into public spaces filled with public art, along the riverfront in one direction and into the city on the other.  The cavernous and curving galleries are best suited for modern art of the giant installation variety, some of which we really liked and some of which was beyond us.  Of our eight precious hours in Bilbao, we spent three on the museum - but the other five were equally memorable. 

On the Roman Basilica

I have to admit: I was under-impressed by the Coliseum. After a couple hours, most of the ruins of the Forum and Palantine Hill were indistinguishable to me. An imaginative person, I nevertheless am unable to imagine what a Roman city would have looked like in its heyday.

But the Basilica of Constantine - that stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it's because I had never heard of it, and thus did not know what to expect. And it would be pretty hard to describe it in any way that would make anyone want to go see it (unlike, say, the Coliseum).

10 things I like about Rotterdam

Rotterdam gets a bad rap in the travel guides for being modern and cold and lacking in the quaint charms of canal towns like Delft and Leiden. But there are only so many canals one can tolerate in any given year.

Rotterdam is definitely a "real" city, full of grime and big buildings, but it is designed on a human scale and doesn't take itself too seriously. I like that. In fact, there's a lot I like about Rotterdam. From our first visit to the city last Saturday, here are just 10 of the things I liked about Rotterdam (in rough order of appearance):

1. Cool architecture

A selection of new, multipurpose buildings down by the docks.

You cannot talk about Rotterdam without talking about cutting-edge modern architecture. (Indeed, Gridskipper just published a nice new map of Rotterdam's most striking buildings.) But cutting-edge modern architecture requires constant construction - of which we saw plenty around town. I could live without the mess, but I love the final results.

2. Graffiti art

Rotterdam is a city of modern whimsy, and even its graffiti is bright and playful.

Pirate cats for Katie. Yaar.

3. Mussels in the Market

I regret now not ordering my own heap of steaming mussels from this mussels stand in Rotterdam's bustling market (Jeff was worried about having fish-hands for the rest of the day). They were cooking the mussels en masse, and people stood shoulder-to-shoulder eating piles of them with their fingers. We also appreciated that a vlaamses frites stand set up shop right next door.

4. Kubiswoningen

It turns out these tilted houses set up on giant concrete pylons are not all that practical to live in, but there's something about their color and shape and misplaced sense of urban utopia that feels sweetly optimistic.

(Designed by Piet Blom and built in the early 1980s, the entire complex is referred to as a "forest," with the cubes as the tree houses.)

With Het Potlood ("The Pencil")

5. Zakinde's Monument to a Devastated City

Why, you might ask, is Rotterdam full of tilted cube houses and modern skyscrappers? Why no traditional Dutch aesthetic like you might find in Amsterdam or the Hague? Because Rotterdam, the largest port in Europe (we're talking huge), was bombed to oblivion during WWII by first the Germans and then the Allies (with the Germans sabotaging what was left on their way out of town). The people of Rotterdam might have rebuilt, but they have not forgotten.

On our walk last Saturday, we counted at least four monuments commemorating the war. The most famous, and the most moving, is Zakinde's Monument to a Devastated City: a statute of a man reeling back in anguish, a gaping hole where his heart used to be.

Rotterdam's history makes me appreciate its modern sensibilities all the more: I like that the people of Rotterdam after the war chose to look forward and build a new city with new ideas, to experiment with open spaces and public art, to make the proverbial lemonade when life gave them rubble.

From another war memorial.

6. The coat check at the art museum

While we were standing in line at the art museum to flex a little museumkaart muscle, I was fascinated by the automated coat check: you turn a key on a chord, and a string with a hanger on the end of it drops down from the sky. You hang up your coat, turn the key back, and the hanger flies up into the sea of coats over your head, safe from prying hands. Fun!

More generally, I liked how such details in Rotterdam's museums were thoughtfully (or at least playfully) designed, like this hidden door to the woman's bathroom at a museum cafe.

Waiting for the loo in the cafe of the Kunsthal.

7. The Sonneveld House

We didn't actually end up going in to the art museum with the cool coat check because the museumkaart did not get us in for free (it's a matter of principle). But then we found out that the Sonneveld House, associated with the Netherlands Architecture Institute, was free even without the museumkaart. I knew then that I would like this place.

The house was built in the 1930s for a local self-made businessman and his family and (I am told) exemplifies the "nieuwe bouwen" style of architecture.

Cutting-edge architecture from the 1930s.

The house is a living museum, decorated as it was when it was built, with the expectation that visitors (who must wear burlap sacks over their shoes) will sit on the couches, poke into cupboards, and touch all the fabrics. There's something lovely about the kinetic experience of actually being *in* a historic home, instead of just an observer of it.

Cooling my heels in the Sonnevelds' living room.

Plus it came with an awesome (and free) audio guide. Highly recommended for the curious and the incurably snoopy.

Getting my learn on with the free audioguide.

8. Field of Bunnies

Not all of Rotterdam's many public art installations relate to the war and its aftermath. My personal favorite is this field of pleasantly bulbous bunny rabbits.

In particular I liked the one facing west, waiting expectantly for the sunset.

(You can see the Euromast in this picture. They call that "foreshadowing".)

9. The Euromast at Sunset

Perhaps because the country is so flat, perhaps because it rains so much, whatever it is, the light and sky and clouds in the Netherlands are ethereal. This means the "golden hour" here is often magical.

Jeff basking in the Golden Hour.

We had a perfect golden hour during our walk from the bunnies (#8) to Delfshaven (#10), along the Maas, past the Olmstead-esque park that houses the Euromast.

Sunsets in Holland can make even industrial-looking hospitals seem beautiful.

The Euromast is like the Space Needle and is of the same era. It has the futuristic optimism of the 1960s, but is also a bit quirky in its rounded asymmetry.

We saved going *up* the Euromast, however, for a later trip. We are now accepting dibs from future guests.

10. Delftshaven

Delftshaven is not my favorite part of Rotterdam, but it was a soothing contrast at the end of the day: A historic port that was swallowed up by Rotterdam many years ago, Delftshaven consists primarily of one cute canal, which is anchored by the requisite windmill and is full of little cafes and shops. At dusk, it was quite pretty.

Note the windmill.

Of historical interest, the pilgrims (of Plymouth Rock fame) prayed at a church here before setting sail across the ocean.

The pilgrims' church, and a traditional Dutch drawbridge.

Perhaps the best part of Delftshaven? That at the end of the canal, you are immediately back into the rush of the real city, with broad avenues and bright lights and crowded side walks. That's the side of Rotterdam I like best.