Coming back from home in the other home doesn’t always need to be a straight route. We can take turns, even if we are not traveling by car. Cheap flights made us do it, and instead of direct trip home, we stopped in The Netherlands.

Wizz Air flies from Skopje to Eindhoven, maybe too early, but at least without delays. Our destination was Rotterdam, but since there is no direct train from the Airport in Eindhoven, first a bus ticket of around 4euros to the city center, and then we took the 90 minutes train to Rotterdam. We thought that the 40% off ticket in a non rush our was for everyone on earth, so we bought that for 12 instead of 20 euros, luckily no control on the way. If I knew we were making a “crime” I would have never bought it just for the sake of calm mind. The less I know the better real edition.

Lately the trips are happening without an agenda, I have some food or sightseeing spots that I want to check out, food markets are a must, how can it not be when you go to Rotterdam, but also general and busy areas are my points of interest.
By the time we changed all the transports it was time to check in. I don’t know if it was bad luck, we didn’t want to pay too much for an accommodation or something else, but I got the impression that it was a bit expensive, even though our hotel was at the airport. All fun at games, but the route is not really walkable, even though it is not that far.

Highlight of the afternoon was the Market Hall, which as you now is also a living building. There were so many stands, but we went for the traditional, harring roll, and then something from the acquired tradition which we really miss in Berlin was Nasi Goreng with Satey and peanut sauce. From not so traditional but neighbourhood taste we had pralines from Leonidas, and the Manon flavor is my favorite.

Second stop was sightseeing, the library which was right across, as well as Piet Bloom’s yellow cube houses. Then we decided to cross the Erasmus bridge and visit the other market halls of the city, because it is the perfect activity to do on a rainy weather. The Food Hallen is right next to the MAAS building, there were many people probably having afterwork drinks, and there was good choice of stands, not as much as in the central hall but still enough, this time we were there for the drinks, Kriek and the local Oedipus. Did we do number three? Of course we did, but only for sightseeing purposes, in the Fenix Food Factory. This one was functioning more like many restaurants in one place, but we were too full for anything extra.

Hello Day 2, this day we had everything to go, the coffee from Roast, the snacks from Artzy, we were walking along the popular streets in the unpopular neighbourhoods, with final iam of reaching Jordi’s bakery that had okay salty stuff, then a bit of sightseeing as the Giant Dwarf aka the Santa Claus sculpture, a round in the De Bijenkorf, sneakers shopping successfully done, but a very successful visit to my all time favorite HEMA as well.

Then we stopped at the open air exhibition of the Marine museum and continued to the most popular street in a popular area this time and that was Witte de Withstraat. Suddenly the clouds cleared and by the time we finished our Kapsalon at Jaffa, all the terraces were full. People watching is such a pleasing hobby. For me this street is the highlight because it tells a lot about the city’s vibe. We checked out another popular area around Oostplein but it seemed that we were there in the wrong period of the day. Our afternoon snack was Surf & Turf at Pol, and next station was Delft Haven.

This is the only place in the city where you can see how it used to be in the past, or the place with Amsterdam style houses, and except 3-4 bars it was very quiet for the night. I think we did quite some neighborhood hopping this day.

Before going to Utrecht we had an unexplored area where we wanted to stop, I think it is called Agnies quarter. It is the area of many design shops, specialty coffee spots and artisan bakeries, and our chosen one was the Le Petitjean bakery, that served out of this world pastries and coffee from the Man Met Brill neighbours. A mega must. Reaching this area from the central station was about 10 minutes walking, accompanied by very pleasing mural views.

Utrecht was not planned, but the changing train time was only 5 minutes, and we decided that we would rather come and take the train from here. Very wise move, since the train station is like an airport it had more than 20 exits. But not only because of this, the city was amazing. Tottaly different architecturally from Rotterdam, and I also had the impression that it was more lively.

As the weather was coldish, instead of coffee we had a soup to go, at the Soup Bros, you need to try it too. Then we took the Voorstrat, which was super lively, and then a stroll around the city watching all the types of “boats” that the lcoals were having excursions with. As the weather was clearing up we reached the tiny Twijn Straat, and enjoyed Kriek on a sunny terrace with all the youngsters of the city, then we were strolling through all the streets that we didn’t passed by in our first round, staring at store fronts, going up and down the canals, snacking all the unhealthy food and eventually ending up at the train station with one last tea from Albert Heijn.

The only thing that we couldnt satisfy our snacking soul with were the mini dutch pancakes poffertjes, neverthe less everything else was mega nice, picturesque and unhealthy, so take the train go to The Netherlands and leave the regrets.