Half A Day In Rotterdam

This morning we headed to Rotterdam, the second largest municipality in the Netherlands and home of the largest port in Europe.  We had originally planned to overnight here and catch a ferry from the nearby town, Hoek van Holland, to England tomorrow morning, but last week we realized we miscounted the number of days we’ve been in the EU so we had to cancel our reservation and take the overnight ferry tonight or risk getting caught for overstaying our welcome and be banned from Schengen Agreement countries!

Our morning was off to another frazzling start today when we weren’t able to use our credit card on the automated ticket machines to buy our train tickets to Rotterdam (I’ve been holding off on pulling more Euros from a bank machine since we’ll soon be switching to the Pound).  We went to line up at the ticket office, which was really busy near the front because most people don’t realize there are more ticket agents if you walk in further and everyone starts queuing at the first two agents.   We went and lined up at the fourth wicket, where there was only one person in front of us so we got our tickets quickly, but going inside to buy from an agent was pointless because they don’t take credit card payments either!  Thankfully we had just enough cash on us.

When we got to Rotterdam, we tossed our bags in a storage locker at the train station and went out to see a bit of the city before heading to Hoek van Holland.  We walked over to city center, where we ended up doing some browsing at a big electronics store Paul dragged me into.  I was mildly bored until we reached the second floor, where they had a huge selection of household items, like vacuum cleaners and Nespresso coffee machines, at really great prices.  We went around looking at things we will eventually need again when we go home for good, and some stuff, like Miele vacuums, were priced so good we thought about buying everything here and shipping it home, but the power voltages are different so they won’t work back in Canada!  Visualizing a future home was kind of fun, but it made me kind of homesick – a part of me wishes we had a house to furnish and decorate!

After a bit more shopping in the city center (the whole city center is basically shopping), we walked along the Nieuwe Maas river, towards the Erasmusbrug, Rotterdam’s most well-know bridge.  We admired the impressive looking cable stayed bridge and the modern architecture along the river banks, and then walked toward the Euromast, a 185m tall tower that is one of Rotterdam’s main tourist attractions.  Since we’ve got the 553.33m tall CN Tower in Toronto, which we visit fairly frequently because Paul has family in Toronto, we didn’t bother going up the Euromast and went instead to a large nearby park to walk around.

When we stopped to check out a family of ducks at a pond, they swam towards us thinking we had bread to throw to them, making me feel bad that I didn’t have anything to give them!  After a bit of pouting , Paul agreed to go find a grocery store to buy a picnic lunch for us to eat in the park and a loaf of bread to feed the ducks.   We spent the rest of our afternoon walking around feeding different groups of ducks, which was quite relaxing and fun.  When Paul started getting tired, he tried to convince me to throw the entire remaining half-loaf of bread at one “lottery duck” so we could go, but I wanted all the ducks to get a little bit so we kept going around the park until my entire loaf was finally gone, two hours later.  For me it was really relaxing to feed the ducks and I think I’ll go feed ducks in parks whenever I’m stressed out now

Before heading to Hoek van Holland to catch our ferry, we stopped at McDonald’s to try a McKroket, which is basically a croquet in a McDonald’s hamburger bun!  It was pretty good (a bit salty) but sadly we won’t be able to get them at any other McDonald’s.  Croquets are probably the thing we’ll miss most about the Netherlands, but overall our time here has been quite enjoyable.  All good things must come to an end though, and tonight we set sail to England – London here we come!