A field trip was scheduled for the marketing and accounting students to go to Rotterdam, a city northwest of Amsterdam that houses the largest port in Europe and the third largest in the entire world. We first took a train to get there, which I enjoyed for reasons I have already discussed on this blog. From there, we found a bike place near the train station and we all rented bicycles to ride around for the day.
From the bicycle shop, we rode to the port to go on a boat tour. The tour of the port was a pretty neat experience. The groups were able to eat the lunch we got for them while looking at the modern architecture of the city before heading into the port. Once inside the port, there were endless large cranes near the ports to be used to load and unload cargo onto ships. It was a pretty neat to see equipment and structures that were so massive compared to what we see in everyday life.
After the tour, we got back on our bikes and rode to the largest tower in Holland. It was there that we were able to go up and see the best views of the entire city. We continued our biking journey around town and was able to see the small canal where the Mayflower supposedly left en route to the states. The ship went there for some kind of pit stop of supplies before leaving for the journey. I was told by my family that I have some descendants that rode on the Mayflower so it was a bit more surreal seeing that.
Once we left the canal, we then went on a really long, but fulfilling bike ride through the city and then onto the rural areas where there was endless space of public parks surrounded by a large lake. There were a lot of people out for a Wednesday afternoon, which seems to be common even when in Amsterdam. Do these people ever work? Our final destination around the lake were these two giant old school wind mills, which was really neat to see since that is one of the large symbols of Holland's past.
We got back to Amsterdam for dinner at the perfect time so we were able to catch up with our friends about their day before a small group of us went to nearby Vondelpark to hang out and relax.
