Rotterdam!

The weekend of September 9th I headed to Rotterdam (located in the Netherlands) with two friends, Ryan and Mariah. We rented a hostel room in the Rotterdam cube houses for 30 euros a night. The hostel was the "StayOkay," and was awesome. Very clean, very well located, and very spacious. Oh, and my room was a CUBE.

IT WAS AWESOME

TOUCH THE SKY

Anyways, Rotterdam is full of starving artists, odd people, and adventure! It also has a ton of cool boats, including the fabled Pancake Boat! WONDEROUS.

 I was excited.

This was the tamest of all the pancakes.

 The pancakes were..odd. We were encouraged to cover them in fruit, meat, sugars, eggs, and cheese. As gross as this sounds, they were delicious. The Pancake Boat toured the beautiful harbor the whole time, and the view was awesome. Oh, and the bottom of the boat was a giant ball pit.

I was so jealous.

We also got to go to the zoo! It was very pretty, but of course everything was expensive. Anyways, we walked all over Rotterdam and I took a few pictures, so here you go! :)

 

Orval Abbey

On September 2nd I traveled with a group of Miami students to the Orval Abbey, a catholic abbey in Belgium. I  could not stop singing "The Sound of Music."

It only looked modest from the outside. Once you got past the main gate the abbey transformed into a huge, well manicured courtyard. It was very impressive, but not very humble for monks oddly enough.

Anyways, as the tour continued we were brought to a small spring. Legend has it that the Queen dropped her wedding ring into the well on accident. She went to the church to pray for a miracle, and when she returned a fish jumped out of the water, the ring in its mouth. The well was then dubbed sacred and is now the water supply used to make the beer.

The abbey is from the medieval times, with the ruins of the first abbey crumbling near the newer abbey. The old abbey was destroyed in the French Revolution, when the French peasants thought the abbey was hiding an important official. It actually wasn't, but it was destroyed nonetheless.

After getting to see all the cool ruins of the abbey, we were taken through the beer museum. The monks brew beer as a way to make money, and all of us were given a bottle of free beer. Be jealous.