Walked from school west to West Blaak to an All you Can Eat Sushi place called Shabu Shabu which I had seen on my walk-through travels yesterday. Now, as you may or may not know, Rob and I are what some might consider slightly addicted to sushi. We've eaten it at a lot of different establishments, in every country and province we've visited, and we've developed a taste for what we like and do not like. Needless to say, I was VERY excited to go for our first major sushi experience in Holland.
That being said, it was almost entirely disappointing. On our walk there, we read some online reviews of the place, and all seemed fairly favourable, at least to the food itself. There were some complaints about slow/bad service but everyone said that the food was wonderful. Awesome, we thought, at least the sushi will be tasty. Wrong.
We started with some rolls and Salmon and Tuna sushi... the Salmon was decent, but everything else was just... blah and there was too much rice. We thought we'd give another round a shot, but it was even worse. The Spicy Tuna rolls were actually made with canned tuna! The only up side was the beer. The service was actually quite good.
Just goes to show that you can't trust everything in the internet review world!
From there we walked to the Markt Blaak, which is just outside of Blaak Station. This had to be the most massive weekly outdoor market I've ever seen!
(photo courtesy of this site)
They had a really wide variety of produce, fish, clothing, electronics, toiletries, bags and wallets, watches, candy, breads, antiques, and various miscellaneous junk. It was very interesting walking through it and seeing the cross section of people who were shopping there. It was probably the most diverse collection of people I've seen since leaving Toronto.
Rob and I bought a kilo of ripe bananas (speckled and browned perfectly to my taste) for 50 cents and a big bag of Maynards Licorice for 2.50 Euros. We haven't made a dent in the candy but we have a lot of traveling ahead of us and will probably need something to munch on!
On our way back into the station to take the train home, we happened across this interesting Statue. We were really confused as to what it was and since the area around it is currently under construction, it looked very out of place. However, thanks to the internet, I was able to find out what it was! Apparently, in honor of famous Rotterdam cartoonist Marten Toonder's 90th birthday, the city of Rotterdam erected this six-meter public monument on Friday, 12 July 2002, featuring several characters from the famous Toonder comic 'Tom Puss and Oliver Bumble'. 
Rob and I were trying to figure it out from this in-depth, meaningful way... like one character represents the arts, the other commerce, the other education... they portray the foundation that keeps the world of economy turning... But no, it apparently had nothing to do with that. Anyway, it was still super cool.
Tomorrow we meet Margaret and Yoni in Delft for a little Delft Blue shopping excursion. Oh, and I hear the city's cool and stuff, too.
I am so sad to hear about the Sushi!! I love it soo good. when you guys get back to t.o we have to go there and try and take ray out to eat it lol
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