Trams, Bikes and Waterbuses

(Trip log part 7)

   Similar to our situation going to Antwerp, we didn’t really know too much about Rotterdam, other than that it is a very modern city. We received our first taste of what was to come when we exited Central Station, which looked like it could have been a set from one of the Star Wars movies.

   I wanted to share a photo I took from inside the immense passenger shed, as I particularly liked the gold and blue paint scheme Nederlandse Spoorwegen had on their trains. Someone commented that they looked like they should be Swedish trains, but maybe the company thought orange (the Dutch royal color) would have been a bit too harsh.

   We learned that only a few historical structures remain in Rotterdam proper, as the city was completely leveled during WWII by German bombing and the resulting three-day fire. In fact, when the Nazis threatened to do the same thing to nearby Utrecht, the Netherlands immediately surrendered.

   When the city was being rebuilt, there were many buildings constructed that mimic an older Dutch look, but there are dozens of unique and innovative structures all along both banks of the Nieuwe Maas. 

An excellent example of the contrast between "old" and new design

   Since we had arrived a few hours ahead of our scheduled meet with our apartment host, Sue and I checked our bags at the station. Armed with another Rick Steves walking tour excerpt, we headed off east through the Cool District (okay wise-guys, I know WE didn’t belong there), in the general direction of the Erasmus bridge.

   I had mentioned before that we aren’t shoppers, but we enjoyed the glass-sheltered, curvy, open-air mall called the Beurstraverse, a well-designed space built below ground level on a street closed to auto traffic.

   Next was the amazing Markthal, which looks like someone cut the ends off an ocean liner and dumped it upside-down. The walls and ceiling contain offices and apartments, and the interior space is a huge market. Yes, there were plenty of things for sale that I could eat, like fruits/vegetables and cheese, but places like this are torture for me, since the stuff I can’t eat looks so much more delicious! I just kept looking at the building and hoping my stomach could ignore the smells.

   We sat on a bench outside the Central Library, which reminded us of the Pompidou Museum in Paris, with the brightly painted ductwork visible on the outside. As we were eating the sensible lunch we had packed, the wind started picking up and dark clouds rolled in. When the first couple drops started to fall, we sprinted for the library and narrowly avoided being soaked by a torrential downpour!

   Sue managed to find some books in English, and I browsed the Rotterdam newspaper. The main articles covered the Women’s European Football Championship, which the city was hosting, but I couldn’t understand a whole lot of the text. I did occupy myself with the puzzle page until the storm ended.

   Our next stop was just a few steps away at the Blaaktoren (leaf tower), a residential tower nicknamed “The Pencil”, for an obvious reason. Adjacent to the tower are the famous Cube Houses designed by Piet Blom in the 1970s. Built upon a pedestrian bridge, individual houses represent trees with the neighborhood being a forest.

   We walked along the old port area and by the Maritime Museum to get a couple pictures of the bridge and waterfront, then looped back to the station to grab our bags. Having done plenty of walking already that afternoon, we were happy to spend the night relaxing in the apartment, catching up on email while watching the Tour coverage and some shows on the BBC station.

   The next morning we purchased day passes for the transportation network, which included the trams, Metro (subway) and waterbuses. We rode the tram out near the bridge to board one of the highspeed catamaran waterbuses that took us 8 miles upriver to the Kinderdijk, the UNESCO World Heritage Site that features the largest concentration of windmills in the Netherlands.

   The waterbus took us a very short distance back towards the city before turning south and heading six miles to Dordrecht, the oldest city (est. 1220) in the province of South Holland. Trading primarily in wine, wood and cereals, early Dordrecht became an important market because of its strategic location within the massive delta formed by the Rhein, Maas and Scheldt Rivers. Because it was built on unstable, marshy soil, many of Dordrecht’s buildings lean significantly.

   Even the massive bell tower of the Grote Kerk ((big church) has a significant tilt, so much so that it was never completed to the height of its intended design. The photo below really shows the slanting facades, as well as the skewed tower in behind.

A few more random shots taken during our waterbus ride on the Nieuwe Maas:

The building on the left looked like it was leaning on a giant spliff 

   The next day we rented some single-speed fiets and set off through Rotterdam harbor, as we crossed the Willemsbrug (photo above) in the Noordereiland neighborhood, then followed the south bank of the river to the west.

The low building in the middle is the Hotel New York, a national heritage
site as the former office of the Holland America Lines

   We took the cyclist/pedestrian tunnel back over to the north side and pedaled out to Delfshaven, which was the Pilgrim fathers’ launching point for the Speedwell, the companion ship to the Mayflower. The charming borough was spared significant damage from the German bombing, and retains some of its old-world look.

   After riding about ten miles with me, Sue decided to head back to the apartment, leaving me to ride on a route I had planned the night before. The Netherlands have a clever usage of signs to mark popular cycling routes in which they place a number marker at intersections of trails with an arrow pointing out the direction of the next number marker.

   A cyclist could use an online map to plot his desired course, then simply write down the waypoint numbers to get there. I will mention right away, that this system would work perfectly if no one tampered with the signs/maps, or if the markers weren’t revised before updating the maps. I’m not sure which happened to me, or maybe a combination of both, but several times I intersected numbered routes I had on my list, only to be dumped out in the middle of a differently numbered path.

   I was lucky that I familiarized myself very well with the city and used some of the higher buildings as landmarks to generally keep in my intended direction. However, the brief moments of confusion did end up adding a few miles to my course, but you probably know I wouldn’t care much about that consequence!

Additional photos from our ride:

Sue, "I want to live there."

The brick-paved bike path went through a pretty little neighborhood...

...and now panning to the right. Having the canal water level higher than
the road on which you were riding was a strange sensation!

Park Kralingse Bos 

   A really strange coincidence occurred when I found Sue had set off on a ride of her own before I had returned to the apartment, and, through later conversation about our respective rides, we found out we had visited some of the same areas. I hadn’t really mentioned where I was going, and although I had left my charted route on MapMyRide in case of an emergency, she hadn’t looked at it..spooky!

Coming up is the final installment of this trip log – on to Amsterdam, then home.