Yup, another delivery in Rotterdam today – yay! Good for business and with this lovely weather, a great drive; 127 km’s from us to the Erasmus Brigde; the white suspension bridge you often see at large events, like the Red Bull airplane racing or when Volvo Ocean Race comes to town.

During WWII most of Rotterdam’s ancient buildings were decimated and the city had to rebuild itself, so a lot of the architecture is new.

Some of it is simply stunning, like my favourite Kubuswoningen designed by Piet Blom in the 70s. I remember learning about these homes back in the 80s in art class at Clarendon [East London, South Africa] … they were cutting edge! (uh, no pun intended)

Whoever would have thought back then that I’d get “misplaced” in Rotterdam this morning and end up right next to them and be able to take a photograph (normally we drive by, no parking and they’re gone in a flash)?

Have you ever tried to navigate with just one or two satellites tracking you? My GPS couldn’t decide if I was in Rotterdam or Amsterdam! Gee, talk about frustrating. Going to call it “tsk tsk” instead of Tom Tom.

Fortunately we’ve had a couple of clients moving into the same new building called “The Red Apple”, which has magnificent views of Erasmus Bridge, the Nieuwe Maas canal and these lovely cube apartments, so I knew I was in the right place! Looked it up on the map book (yes, we still have one and I do use it periodically) and managed the find the right address.

It’s a bit of a nightmare with all this building going on. Huge flat-bed trailers take up entire blocks and then take half an hour to turn the corner. Sigh. Patience. Good opportunity to do some people spotting. And building spotting.

If for some reason, we ever wanted to live in a city apartment, then any one of the top floors of the “rode appel” would do just nicely. Our clients get all glowy and proud while I genuinely ooh and aah over the views, in between dragging the rolls of underlay inside. Perhaps I don’t get out often enough? ha ha ha