Following on from our fabulous time looking around the stylish Huis Sonneveld we still had plenty of time left to explore Rotterdam, or we would have had if I hadn’t noticed that my wife was suffering a little with an old ankle injury and the combination of a fair bit of walking on tours leading up to this day in the Dutch city. My concern for both her own well-being and my own if I didn’t show I was a considerate husband and try to bring the day’s exertions to a gentle end made making the decision to curtail our plans for more museums an easy one.
So, this post will mostly just contain photos taken on the walk from the historic house we’d just been to back to the cruise port where Island Princess would be waiting for us to take the weight off our feet. It might give you a little idea about the sort of things you can typically see in Europe’s largest seaport. The walking route we took was the simplest available, heading east along Westblaak then south down Schiedamsedijk to the Erasmus Bridge.
We’d already seen a fair bit of modern art in the parks we’d explored earlier in the day in Rotterdam but it turned out that there was no shortage of it along the main roads in the city either. Initially, most of the public artworks were sculptural, large, and colourful.
Of course, with this being the Netherlands the other thing that it was impossible not to notice was the amount of bikes everywhere. We certainly didn’t see quite as many as when we’d visited Amsterdam on a few occasions before but then again these were busier, more main streets in Rotterdam we were walking along, so cars had more of a presence.
As we turned to head south we noticed more street art painted on walls and shutters and fewer sculptures. Not the best examples of the art form, but always appreciated.
The Low Light of the Hook of Holland is the long name for the relatively small lighthouse that originally stood at the Hook of Holland before an expanding coastline pushed it too far back from the sea to be effective. The lighthouse was built in 1899 and has been standing in its present position beside the Maritime Museum since 1990.
A building on the corner near the bridge we’d be soon crossing caught my eye. I can just imagine the architect holding open a page of designs.
“And these are the types of windows we can do.”
“I like them. Yes, they’ll be great.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them, thanks.”
The structure in the photo below is the national monument to the Dutch merchant navy personnel who died in service while aiding the allies in wartime.
This brought us to the northern side of the Nieuwe Maas canal where we immediately spotted our lovely cruise ship, Island Princess, at the port, waiting for us with the promise of rest and a drinks package that longed for us to continue using it.
Oddly, neither of us could remember walking past a luminous, lime green rhinoceros when we’d left the ship earlier in the day but we couldn’t help but notice one on the approach to the terminal.
As we weren’t completely sure whether my wife’s walking woes would have an impact on the next and last port on this cruise, and as we’d been there a few times before so it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stay aboard, we decided to empty our pockets of all the Euros we had on us in Rotterdam’s cruise terminal. There were a few options for souvenirs but we ended up getting several packs of Stroopwafel, knowing it would be easy to distribute these to family members as something we’d brought back to them even if there wasn’t much thought in it.
We spent the remainder of our time docked alongside in Rotterdam on the ship, enjoying sitting down, drinking, reading, backing up photos, watching water taxis and water buses pass by our balcony, and lights in the city start to switch on as the evening started to draw in.
In the next post in this 2022 Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll take a look at Rotterdam from the balcony of Island Princess as we sail away down the Nieuwe Maas canal at night ahead of a short overnight cruise to our final port of call in Belgium.