The Long Study Tour As Seen In My Sketchbook
My long study tour took place during Travel Week #2 — with my core class, Urban Design Studio, I went to Brussels in Belgium as well as Rotterdam and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Day 1: April 20
Copenhagen → Brussels
We started the day bright and early, meeting at the Copenhagen airport at 6:05am. After landing in Brussels, we headed to the hotel to drop off our luggage and then went straight out into the city for a lot of walking around. Here are some of the things we saw:
For lunch, we ate at a beautiful food market. I split some Korean fried chicken with a couple of classmates.
For the rest of the day, we continued walking around and seeing more sites:
After dinner on our own, we headed back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep.
Day 2: April 21
Brussels
Day 2 also involved a lot of walking! Luckily, we started off the day with a hearty breakfast at the hotel — I think it was probably the best hotel breakfast I've ever had. I split the sweet potato hash and quinoa pancakes with a classmate. I only got this photo from when we were almost done because we were enjoying it too much:
Then, we headed out.
Day 3: April 22
Brussels → Rotterdam → Amsterdam
I was sad to say goodbye to our wonderful hotel in Brussels — in addition to the great food, it had a spectacular view of the botanical gardens and really cool interior decorating, so I had been finding design inspiration even just when heading in for the night.
However, I was extremely excited to see some new places. We took a bus from Brussels to Rotterdam with a brief stop to see a spectacular bridge along the way. In Rotterdam, we went to several amazing museums, then got back on the bus to make our way to Amsterdam.
Upon arriving, we headed out for a class dinner. We got to see lots of beautiful canals on the walk to the restaurant! For dinner, we had delicious Indonesian food served family-style.
Day 4: April 23
Amsterdam
After a late start (allowing us time to sleep in and explore a bit on our own), we met up for a fantastic lunch at a restaurant located within one of the sites we were learning about.
We continued walking along the water to see several more sites.
That evening, we had more time to explore on our own, grab dinner, and work in our sketchbooks.
Day 5: April 24
Amsterdam
We started the day with a visit to a landscape architecture firm. It was really interesting to see their work environment and hear about the projects they were working on.
After that, we headed to the Centraal Station to see some underground bike parking. It's definitely true that biking is huge in Amsterdam — even more so than Copenhagen! Then, we took a ferry across the water to the artsy NDSM neighborhood.
We had one last fantastic dinner with the class to close out the day.
Day 6: April 25
Amsterdam → Copenhagen
The last morning, we had free time for to explore the city. I ended up going to the Rijksmuseum, which was very close to our hotel. It was the perfect way to end the trip before flying back to Copenhagen!
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