Flower Parade and Port of Rotterdam

On April 22 I went to a flower parade out here in the Netherlands. Yes, you guessed it. Spring has arrived! It's getting warmer here, the flowers are in bloom, and i can finally stop wearing my wool scarf and gloves!

Really, it's becoming livable out here. And the parade was very nice. Similar to our Rose parade, they had marching bands, drill team girls, and of course floats made completely from Dutch flowers.



I don't know if you were aware, but Holland is known for it's Tulips. It's actually the Tulip capital of the world! So we did the Dutch thing, i mean... we had to! We saw the flowers :) SO PRETTY!



The other 'MUST SEE while living in Rotterdam' attraction is the PORT of ROTTERDAM. This port, until 2 years ago, was the largest port in the entire world! Now, Asia took over, but it still remains the largest port of Europe. And when they say large, they really do mean LARGE.

The university had an excursion today and it was great. The executive of PR was our tour guide which was a treat. Anyways, some interesting facts: the port is practically man made. Holland had a small river but it wasn't large enough to support big ships with cargo, so people basically dug out sand and added water and made a huge river "The River Mass."



Also something interesting: they drove us to this one part of the port where all the machinery, which includes truck looking things and huge cargo lifting cranes, well, they worked automatically without anyone running the machines! OK i don't mean the typical stuff where you press the on button. I'm talking about a truck driving around without anyone DRIVING it!



They explained that under the cement there's a huge electric platform which operates these machines and it's programmed to sensor their movements without people running them. Talk about saving on labor costs! It kinda freeked me out... what if these machines turn on us and go on a rampage to kill all humans?!!



Fine, no more scary movies :)

Anyways, just thought i'd share... it was pretty interesting.

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Ohh yea, almost forgot, sunday i went to see the Russian Ballet "Romeo and Juliet." It was sooo beautiful.

I want to be a ballerina!!!