During our stay in The Hague, our final destination for this European vacation, we took a day trip to nearby Rotterdam. Actually, the weather was nice in the morning. The rain didn’t come until the afternoon. But it made for a catchy, alliterative headline.
We were impressed! It’s a modern, beautiful city with lots of unique, eye-catching architecture. The train station is a good example.
This statue is called “Moments Contained,” by British artist Thomas J Price. The sculpture is designed to be a monument for “ordinary” people, specifically those who may be stereotyped or marginalized. It challenges the concept of who gets to be honored in public monuments.
This is the spacious interior of the train station.
Cool architecture and design were everywhere! This is a light rail and metro station.
Rotterdam impressed us as one of the most visually LGBTQ-welcoming cities we’ve ever seen.
We visited Rotterdam’s iconic Cube Houses, designed by Piet Blom in the 1970s.
One Cube House is a model home/museum, allowing people to see what it’s like inside.
As we walked from the Cube Houses to our next destination, we passed the Zero Flags Project. It displays the flags of 63 countries where homosexual relations, or simply being homosexual, are punishable by imprisonment or death.
Here are a few photos from the waterfront. Rotterdam is the largest shipping port in Europe and one of the largest in the world.
We passed another LGBTQ-themed outdoor art installation.
Our next stop was an attraction called Remastered. It was a multi-media immersive experience lasting 60 minutes. We were led through four large rooms with imagery projected on all walls, the ceiling, and the floor, accompanied by music.
The first room, bathed in dark blue, created the illusion that we were underwater. The imagery of schools of fish and underwater plants interacted with people’s movements. As we wandered around the room, the schools of fish at our feet would move to stay out of our path. People could wave their arms across the plants on the walls, and they would move. Here are a couple of short videos.
The second room, which wasn’t interactive, simulated floating through clouds.
The third room was truly bizarre. The constantly changing imagery was weird, nonsensical, and often creepy. It was as if AI had taken LSD and these were the resulting hallucinations.
The final room was a 30-minute show that was described on their website as “the old Dutch Masters reimagined by the new Dutch Masters. [It’s] a world where you go on parade with the unearthly creatures of Jeroen Bosch, get immersed in the colourful scenes of Van Gogh, and dance on the beat of Mondrian’s ‘Victory Boogie Woogie’.” If you have been to “The Immersive Van Gogh,” this was similar.
We enjoyed seeing what digital artists can accomplish with the help of AI. But it was a bit too trippy and, at times, disturbing for us to completely enjoy it.
When we emerged from Remastered in the early afternoon, it was raining. We walked several blocks to the Kunsthal museum which was … okay. It was part modern art and part exhibitions reflecting current culture.
Next, we walked to “The Vault,” a unique building used to store artwork from the adjacent Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s collection that is not currently on display. The sides of the building are mirrors, reflecting the building’s surroundings.
The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was closed for renovation, but The Vault was open. Some of their art was presented in organized displays. In other cases, we could look through glass windows and see all kinds of art and other objects in the museum’s collection stored on warehouse-like shelves.
After exploring the Vault, it was time to catch the train back to the Hague. We enjoyed Rotterdam and hope to return someday for a longer visit.