Adventures of Beth and Dan: “Sea”ing Rotterdam

Thursday the 15th we were at sea making our way to Rotterdam. The weather was around 57 degrees and a chance of rain forecast so even onboard we dress in long pants and sweat shirts or sweaters. Sea days give us a day to sleep in a little, clean up our cabin and do laundry. It’s also a time to read that good book you brought onboard finding some quiet nook on the ship. We like to relax on the loungers by the pool on the Lido or sometimes even just hang out in our room since we have a balcony. We don’t seem to tire of looking for sealife whether it be whales or birds.

There were a few lectures and port talks today; the EXC talk today was on Cobh (pronounced Cove) and Cork. The lecture was on The Shipwrecks of the North Atlantic; a rather sober topic.

I try to also find some time to work on the blog finding that I forget so much in just a day if I don’t write things down. I try to tell myself that it’s because I have so many other things to enjoy doing! Ha ha

Entertainment this evening was a group from England called TheRunaround Kids. They called them the UK’s finest vintage music outfit and we thoroughly enjoyed them as did most of the audience giving them an enthusiastic round of applause at the end of their performance. They were very talented, had some pretty funny jokes and knew how to capture an audience and hang on to them. They want many great songs of the 50’s and 60’s. Typically after the show we head for our room and check out the movies playing on the tv. But we also needed to get things ready for our day in Rotterdam so we lay out our clothes and get the backpack ready too. We know it will be another cold day which means gloves, scarves, and layering.

We docked at 7 am right in the center of the city of Rotterdam. This is the original home of Holland America and the original old Rotterdam ship is here at another mooring location. The ship is now a floating hotel, a restaurant and an museum; you can take tours of her or enjoy wandering through her on a tour. They say she was full of asbestos so after she was purchased to be located her the company that bought her realized it would cost as much to remove the asbestos as it did to buy her!!

Today we are on a private type tour. Basically we hooked up with another couple from California and purchase online tickets to the Kinderdijk, another UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its 18th century windmills. The tickets included our transportation to and from the windmills and entrance into the windmills themselves. We wern’t quite sure how long it would take us to walk to the water taxi so we got off much earlier than we had planned. The walk was no more than 15 minutes to the water taxi and then about 30 minutes by water, having to change at one location to get to the windmills sooner. Our only mistake was that we hadn’t purchased any Euro’s and the water taxi we switched over to wouldn’t take anything but Euros! Fortuantely our friends loaned us a few and we were able to continue on to the site. By getting up early and off the ship by 7:30 we avoided the mass of people that were coming as we were leaving!

When we got back to town we decided to walk up through the city center and take in what we could before we reboarded the ship. The day turned out to be more sunny than cloudy and we really never had rain.

Rotterdam was a debarkation point for about 200 people and an embarkation for about that many coming aboard; this required another muster drill with the new passengers so all aboard was 4:00. We really would have enjoyed one more day here in this lovely modern city.

A little history on Rotterdam; it was founded in the 13th century and became a town in 1340 with 640,000 inhabitants. In 1940 the city center was destroyed by Nazi German Air Force. After the Second World War the city was reconstructed. It is now famous for it’s daring architecture . The river flowing through it is called Nieuwe Maas, a branch of the Rhine. Rotterdam is the most important Harbour for Germany. Most districts of Rotterdam are located below sea level. Heavy dikes defend the city against the river and the sea. Things to see in Rotterdam include The Hague; this City is the seat of the Dutch government, parliament and the residences of King Alexander; Delft which is a short train ride away where you can discover picturesque canals and row houses captured by the fainter Johannesburg Vermeer in his famous “View of Delft”. If you fancy tasty cheese you can find your hearts content in Gouda. Gouda is also a city where you can see the Gouda pipes and the stained glass windows of St Jan’s Church.

Amsterdam is the Large’s port in Europe and one of the busiest ports in the world. The city has a population of 1.3 million and lives up to the famous adage, “Amsterdam to party, Den Haag to live, Rotterdam to work”.The unique Cube Houses are here designed by Piet Blom. Each house is a cube that rests on a hexagon shaped pylon at a 45 degree angle. The Euromast is also here which is 607 feet tall.

The Eurasia Bridge also called The Swan is here; we walked across it to get to the water taxi. It is 800 meters long and opened in 1996.

Across the Erasmus Bridge to get to our water taxi.

Our water taxi is in view!

This way to the Windmills!

Get a photo shot where with your kids in the giant shoe!

One of the many beautiful windmills that have been restored and or are being restored.

The dikes keep the water out of the fields.

We enter the museum of the windmills.

A shoe rack for your wooden shoes; you don’t wear them in the house!

We met this man on the walk ; he said we could take his photo but only if we didn’t spread it around! Ha ha. He had a legal permit to hunt the overabundance of geese and ducks. He looked like something out of the past...