Het Park is Dutch for “the park” but it’s also known as Euromast Park in Rotterdam as you can see the tower from almost anywhere in it and it’s not far away to walk to. We wanted to check out the park partly because it was a large green space in the city and partly because it wasn’t too far out of the way from one place we really did want to visit, and that will be covered in the next post.
After our arrival at the cruise terminal aboard Island Princess we’d walked over the Erasmus Bridge to Veerhaven and it was just a short stroll from there before we found ourselves looking around Het Park. The Dutch don’t capitalise the aitch at the start of Het Park but I’m not Dutch, so I will.
There’s not a huge amount to say about the park other than it was very pleasant and if you like parks and gardens then you’d probably like this one. There were some interesting-looking birds for the ornithologists to ooh and aah over, there were lovely little lakes through the green area for fans of water to ooh and aah over, and there were even some sculptures for art lovers to ooh and aah over. If nothing else, and if you’ve been exploring Rotterdam prior to this, then it makes for a great break from the city skyline and roads, trams, cars, and bikes you’ve probably seen more than enough of.
Our walk through Het Park at first more-or-less took us in whichever direction we could see something of interest in and that’s why sculptures feature prominently. The first we happened upon was a statue of Hendrik Tollens, a poet whose work was used as the country’s national anthem until 1932.
More interesting to us were the modern art pieces. The memorial to the Dutch composer Anton Verhey was nice enough but it was eclipsed by the enormous public artwork by Madeleine Berkhemer called Lost Pearls made up of an open oyster shell and a pearl necklace large enough for children to play on.
We weaved a path this way and that through the park, occasionally stopping to admire rabbits or herons or the view of the Euromast, but our general direction eventually turned northwards and out of Het Park towards the next place we wanted to see.
Just before we left the park area we wandered through the small formal gardens set out in front of Dudok, a restaurant there with quite attractive views for lunch if the weather were slightly better than we were being treated to.
In the next post covering what we got up to in Rotterdam for the day we’ll look around and be wowed by a fabulous piece of modernist home design when we visit Huis Sonneveld.