Voyage of the Vikings Redux – Rotterdam, Netherlands

Cruise Day 18

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

First off, happy birthday to my brother Doug.  While we have been sailing the seas, he and his family have been in Canada visiting Banff and Jasper National Parks.

Today we are in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.  It is the halfway point of our cruise and the turn around point.  Most of the passengers are staying on board for the trip home, but there will be some getting off and some getting on here.  There will also be a number of crew members, including our dining steward Supri, getting off and their replacements getting on.

We traveled from Lerwick in the north to get to Rotterdam.

The red marker is where we docked in Rotterdam.  We had to sail in through a long channel that was mostly a commercial port.  Today we'll be visiting the Windmills of Kinderdijk (the black marker to the left of the Rotterdam marker.

This is another of the ports we visited back in 2016, but we had a two day stay that time (Day 1 and Day 2 links), but we will only be here for one day this time.  We are taking a ship excursion today that starts at 8:15 so we were up early to get ready and get to the meeting spots before eight.  We are docked at a great spot in the center of Rotterdam right near the iconic Erasmusbrug Bridge or “The Swan” as the locals call it.

The Erasmusbrug Bridge or "The Swan" as the locals call it.  This was the view from our balcony today, not bad.

The excursion is called “Windmills of Kinderdijk” which visits a UNESCO World Heritage Site where 19 of the historic Dutch windmills have been preserved.  Originally this excursion was full, and we decided to go on our own.  You can take a waterbus to Kinderdijk and then enter the park and we had also purchased tickets for a boat ride that would take you by the windmills.  After further investigation we realized that this might be a little risky if the waterbus was full and we couldn’t get back to the ship.  Also, the waterbus dock was a pretty long walk from the ship, so when two openings became available on the ship excursion, we changed our plans and booked the ship excursion.  The tickets we had purchased on our own weren’t very expensive, so we decided to just take the loss.

Our tour started with a drive through Rotterdam with our guide talking about the history and highlights of the city.  We found this very interesting as on our previous visit we had gone out of town on both days and not seen any of the city.  In referring to the Netherlands in the past I have used Holland and Netherlands interchangeably, but I found out today that is wrong.  Holland is just one area in The Netherlands, so the correct name for the country is always Netherlands.

As we left the city, our guide pointed out a shipyard that builds very luxurious yachts for the very rich including ones recently for Jeff Bezos and Stephen Spielberg.  She told us that after Bezos’s boat was built, it was actually too large to fit under the bridge and Bezos had said he would pay to have the bridge taken down and reassembled (link to story).  That didn’t sit very well with the local Dutch so that never came to fruition, and they ended up taking down some of the upper parts of the yacht to clear the bridge.  I had read a brief article about that when it happened, but this gave me the full details.

These are all pictures Val took from the bus, pardon all the reflections.

These odd looking buildings are actually homes.  Our guide said he couldn't figure out how people lived in them, but they do look unique.

 

This is the shipyard where they build luxurious yachts for the rich and famous including the notorious yacht built for Jeff Bezos.

The road followed a river and there was a lot of boat traffic including river cruise boats (above) and barges (below).

After a 45 minute, drive we arrive in Kinderdijk and entered the park where we first saw a 20 minute movie on the history of the windmills and their importance to the Dutch.  There are 19 windmills in all and most of them are private and still being lived in and used.  The Netherlands is very flat and much of the land was reclaimed from the seas by the use of dikes.  A lot of areas are below sea level and this area we are visiting is 20 feet below sea level.  As we drove into the area, we passed by a large river that was at sea level where water from the low lying areas is pumped.

Some of the historic 19 windmills on this canal.

After the movie, we walked to the one windmills that was open to the public and used as a museum.  It was still a working mill with the windmill blades still turning in the wind and the internal machinery still grinding away, very interesting.  We were left on our own after that and we thought we might use our boat tickets after all and take the boat tour, but our guide told us we wouldn’t get back to the bus in time.  We spent the rest of our free time exploring a bit more and then checking out the gift shop where I got a t-shirt and Val bought some gifts.

 

This is the only windmill that was open to the public.  There is a museum inside and the mill is still functioning.

A couple of views from the inside.

The blades were turning and the cogs and gears were turning despite their age.

While we waited to meet up with our group we sat next to the canal and these are a couple of the homes on the other side.

We met up with our group and walked back to the bus to start our drive back to Rotterdam.  Our guide asked us if we wanted to take a little extra time and drive another way back to the city and we all agreed.  We drove through the country and saw a more agricultural area that was very green and beautiful.  We arrived back in Rotterdam and drove through a different part of the city.  Eventually we arrived back at the ship and our tour was over.

These were taken from the bus as we traveled back to Rotterdam on a route that took us through some rural countryside.

We really enjoyed this tour; the weather was a little cool, but very comfortable with partly sunny skies and beautiful white clouds.  Our guide was very good with lots of knowledge of Dutch history as well as many local stories to tell.  We have been lucky on this cruise to have so many good guides.

We had originally planned to walk across the bridge and explore the city center, but after getting up early and all the walking we did at the windmills, we just didn’t feel like any more walking and decided to just return to the ship.  Being 75 is sure different than being 25 or even 50.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and watching all the activity on the water from our balcony.  The ship was getting refueled and there was a huge fuel barge tied up to the ship right below our balcony and there was activity there to watch also.  We were supposed to sail away at 5:00 PM, but as often happens when refueling, our leaving was delayed until after six.  There was also supposed to be a sail away party on the rear Lido Deck, but light rain started to fall so we didn’t go out for that.  Bad weather seems to have spoiled quite a few of our sail always on this cruise.

The weather was beautiful when we got back, but it steadily worsened as it got near evening.

There were water taxis everywhere speeding along to get their passengers to their destinations.

The ship was being refueled for the trip back to Boston.  The tanker right next to the ship was huge, and there was also a smaller one tied up to it.

Rotterdam is a huge port so we saw lots of fueling barges going past.

 

This was taken looking past the Lido outside pool deck.  You can see how close we were docked to "The Swan".

This is the terminal, you can see the walkway that leads off the ship into the terminal.

This is looking at the terminal from the rear of the ship.  In the upper part of the picture there is a building that is called the Hotel New York that was the original home of the Holland America Company.  This year is Holland America's 150th year anniversary, but I don't think that building has been around that long.

The commercial shipping channel out of Rotterdam is very long and takes over two hours to get to open seas.  It is interesting though, and I spent much of the time before dinner out on the balcony watching us sail out.  I actually spent the time in and out as it got quite cool so I would stay out for a while and then back in to warm up.

We met one of our new dining stewards tonight, but we haven’t been assigned the other one yet.  After dinner it was back to the casino with Val having no luck at all, but of course, after her big win, who cares.  After a long drought, I finally had a good night and ended up ahead for a change, a good night for me.

We were tired tonight from our early morning, but the good news is we are finally starting to gain back the time we lost on our voyage east, and the clocks will be set back one hour tonight giving us an extra hour of sleep, hooray!!